Tiffany Stratton Starts the Show, Nia Jax VS Michin
Friday Night SmackDown kicked off this week with Tiffany Stratton as the brand-new Miss Money in the Bank celebrated her Ladder Match victory. Before Tiffany could brag too much, Bayley interrupted her and made it clear that if she tries to cash in on the WWE Women’s Champion, Stratton will be making a little bit more history as the first-ever female to unsuccessfully cash in her contract. Nia Jax then arrived and took plenty of shots at The Role Model before Michin arrived to stop the heels from beating up Bayley. We then went straight into the match between Nia Jax and Michin, and this was totally fine. There wasn’t too much to it, but there was nothing bad about it and The HBIC got a nice little sequence which saw her come close to winning following a Tornado DDT. In the end, though, a Samoan Drop followed by the Annihilator was enough for the Queen of the Ring to score the win before the heels completely destroyed Bayley in the centre of the ring. This actually opened the door for Tiffany Stratton to potentially cash-in and become Champion, but Queen Nia made it clear that she wasn’t a big fan of that idea!
Grade: C+ (Overall)
Apollo Crews and Baron Corbin VS Legado Del Fantasma, LA Knight Promo, Blair Davenport VS Naomi, DIY VS A-Town Down Under: WWE Tag Team Championships
Chelsea Green and Piper Niven weren’t impressed with Byron Saxton’s questions whilst waiting outside of Nick Aldis’ office before we got a great video promo highlighting The Bloodline as Solo Sikoa said he’s coming for Cody Rhodes. Andrade and Carmelo Hayes then set up a match after an interaction in an empty arena before it was time for Apollo Crews and Baron Corbin to team up to take on Legado Del Fantasma. Whilst there wasn’t much intrigue for this match, the action was pretty decent which isn’t a surprise given all four men are talented competitors. I always enjoy seeing Baron Corbin do his thing too as he’s underrated, and he did a really nice dive to take out Angel and Berto early on. In the end, though, it was the devious tactics of one Santos Escobar that proved crucial as he kneed Apollo Crews right in the fact before Angel hit the Wing-Clipper to score the victory!
Grade: C+
Chelsea Green and Piper Niven had an interaction with Pretty Deadly backstage (they should be in their musical) as LA Knight walked out of Nick Aldis’ office to the disgust of Ms. Green. Randy Orton then told Cody Rhodes that he has his back (I don’t believe him for one second) before LA Knight arrived to cut a promo on Logan Paul. The Megastar said he now has a contract for a United States Championship match with The Maverick at Summerslam and all he needs is for Logan to sign it. This was a pretty basic segment, but Knight is always great on the microphone so it’s never a bad thing!
Grade: C+
We then headed straight into another match as Blair Davenport went one-on-one with Naomi. This was a mess in my opinion, the action was far too slow, you could tell that Blair and Naomi just weren’t clicking as opponents, and the decision to have Naomi beat Davenport is honestly shocking. Like, we keep getting these video packages highlighting how cool Blair is, but then she continues to lose. If you watched BD in her NXT or NXT UK days, you know how good she is. However, if you haven’t, WWE aren’t giving you any reason to care about her which is pretty abysmal.
Grade: E
Naomi, Bianca Belair, and Jade Cargill were being annoying backstage as they confirmed that Nick Aldis wasn’t at SmackDown which really annoyed Chelsea Green, Piper Niven, and Pretty Deadly. This also made no sense as he literally handed LA Knight a contract earlier in the show! It was then time for a Championship rematch as DIY put their newly won WWE Tag Team Championships on the line against the former Champions A-Town Down Under! This was a good match, by far the best on the show, but it wasn’t to the quality of last week’s showdown for a number of reasons. Still, this was effective in giving DIY a successful Title defense whilst also planting more seeds between Austin Theory and Grayson Waller. After DIY scored the victory after Grayson accidentally kneed Theory, Austin was clearly annoyed with Waller before The Arrogant Aussie ran off as Theory got flattened by Jacob Fatu. Fatu then went on a rampage that saw him absolutely destroy DIY, and I’m already worried for Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa’s reign!
Grade: B-
The Bloodline End the Show
Following Jacob Fatu’s attack on the WWE Tag Team Champions, Solo Sikoa and the rest of The Bloodline arrived as Solo made it clear that they will punish anyone who fails to Acknowledge him. This includes Roman Reigns if and when he decides to come back before Cody Rhodes arrived and gifted Sikoa a shot at the Undisputed WWE Championship for Summerslam. Before that, though, The Bloodline attacked Cody before Randy Orton ran down to make the save. Randy was initially successful, but that was until he got ran through by Jacob Fatu. Rhodes was then forced to watch on as The Bloodline delivered a Triple Powerbomb to send Orton crashing through the announce table before Solo Sikoa dropped The American Nightmare with a Samoan Spike to end the segment. Once again, The Bloodline are the best thing on SmackDown, and it’s not even close!
Comments