Chad Gable Interrupts Cody Rhodes, Tiffany Stratton VS Elektra Lopez VS Naomi: Women’s United States Championship Tournament (Round 1)
Friday Night SmackDown kicked off this week with Apollo Crews getting floored by The Bloodline before Cody Rhodes arrived to cut an in-ring promo! Cody wanted to talk about Kevin Owens, but American Made then made a surprising appearance as Chad Gable called out Rhodes for being a terrible friend! The American Nightmare thought this was funny and challenged Gable to a match which The Master accepted! There wasn’t much to this, but it did what it needed to do!
Grade: C+
Bianca Belair and Naomi were chatting backstage before Chelsea Green and Piper Niven laid out Bianca after Naomi headed down to the ring! It was then perfectly time for the first match of the night as Naomi collided with both Elektra Lopez and Tiffany Stratton in another First Round matchup of the Women’s United States Championship Tournament! This was okay, there were some decent moments, but it was also quite sloppy at times. Elektra Lopez simply doesn’t wrestle enough to ever look truly comfortable whilst Naomi always has an off moment at some point! The crowd were well behind Tiffany Stratton here, though, cheering on the hometown favourite, and in the end, after Candice LeRae dealt with Naomi, Tiffy Stratton delivered the Prettiest Moonsault Ever onto La Madrina to pick up the victory and book her ticket to next week’s Semi-Final!
Grade: C+
Bianca Belair VS Piper Niven, LA Knight Interrupts Shinsuke Nakamura, Motor City Machine Guns VS DIY: WWE Tag Team Championships, Kevin Owens Interview
The Street Profits were found laid out in the back as Johnny Gargano offered for DIY to step up in their place! Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley were more than happy with this before it was time for Bianca Belair to go one-on-one with Piper Niven! I thought this was a good match, it got a lot more time than I expected it too, and it was Piper Niven who was in control for the most part! Bianca was selling a rib injury throughout which made sense, and even though the ending was very predictable as Belair won with a K.O.D. after dropping Piper on top of Chelsea Green, I still think this was good overall!
Grade: B-
Bianca Belair and Naomi were backstage as they continue to try and figure out who attacked Jade Cargill before Shinsuke Nakamura headed down to the ring to celebrate his United States Championship victory! However, LA Knight interrupted straight away to say that he deserves his rematch before Andrade also appeared saying he has unfinished business with Shinsuke too! Surprisingly, this then led to both Knight and El Idolo getting dropped by The Bloodline as we got a cool face-off between Nakamura and Jacob Fatu! Solo Sikoa then followed it up with a great promo saying he’s sick and tired of all the disrespect and that despite what happened on Saturday, he still very much is The Tribal Chief! This was all good and effective!
Grade: B-
Tommaso Ciampa told Johnny Gargano that tonight is the night where things have to change before Kevin Owens sent in a video saying that if Michael Cole wants to interview him, he has to come to him to do it! It was then Title time as the Motor City Machine Guns put their WWE Tag Team Championships on the line against DIY! This was all about story as Tommaso Ciampa got consistently angrier with every action that Johnny Gargano took! Ciampa was adamant about doing whatever it takes to win, but Gargano simply wanted to out-wrestle Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley for the Titles! But then, in what was a great twist, Johnny Wrestling delivered a low blow to Sabin followed by a Superkick to Shelley as DIY hit Meet in the Middle to once again be crowned as the WWE Tag Team Champions! Awesome, so well deserved, and a Heel DIY run could be awesome!
Grade: B+ (Overall)
DIY were delighted with themselves as they celebrated with Candice LeRae backstage before Michael Cole headed outside to conduct an interview with Kevin Owens in Owens’ own car! KO pointed out the reasons why he’s right whilst Cole just wanted to put all the blame on Kevin’s shoulders! Eventually, Owens got fed up of this and kicked Michael Cole out of his car, and I thought this was really well done, it was something different, and Kevin Owens’ character right now is just terrific!
Grade: B
Cody Rhodes VS Chad Gable
After an interesting interaction between Gunther and Carmelo Hayes, it was Main Event time as Cody Rhodes took on Chad Gable! This was a solid wrestling match, it was technical, and the story of Chad consistently working on the leg of Cody worked well! The result was always going to be Rhodes winning with a Cross Rhodes, but the selling of The American Nightmare’s injury is an interesting one! After the match, Kevin Owens finally entered the arena and stomped on the Undisputed WWE Champion’s bad leg before a big brawl broke out to end the show! I do really hope KO wins the Title next week!
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