As the FOX era of Friday Night SmackDown continues, much of this week’s episode was focused on hyping up the matches that will be taking place at Crown Jewel on October 31st. There was also further developments in the story surrounding the SmackDown Women’s Championship. I mention those two things separately because, sadly, women have been cancelled in Saudi Arabia. Welcome to the most must-see VultureHound review in history; welcome to… The SmackDown Review.
Results:
– Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode defeated The New Day in a tag team match.
– Lacey Evans defeated a WWE 2K20 CAW (“local competitor”, Cameron Connors).
– Kalisto defeated Drew Gulak.
– Nikki Cross defeated Mandy Rose.
– Roman Reigns, Ali & *sigh* Shorty G defeated King Corbin, Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro in a 6-man tag team match.
Bradley’s Best Bits:
There was a wonderful return to the Firefly Funhouse where Bray Wyatt was conducting a funeral for Ramblin’ Rabbit. Yet, just as the host kissed the rabbit on its bloodied head, the creature came back from the dead in a metaphor that extends itself to The Fiend’s feud with Seth Rollins – anything can come back if you just believe.
Depending on how Seth responds on Monday Night RAW, this might have just saved our intrigue for the match “that can’t be stopped for any reason” going into Crown Jewel on Thursday.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGOncF7_Y70]
The seed of doubt has well and truly been sown as to whether or not the Yes Movement is back. In a segment that genuinely had my full attention, Sami Zayn, alongside Shinsuke Nakamura, did his best to reason with Bryan as to why the Yes Movement can never come back. Sami played on his connections to Bryan through environmentalism and wanting to save the planet whilst ignoring what the “fickle” WWE Universe has to say.
Bryan left without having anything to say and has made us all wonder what he will do next. It seems as though this is the beginning of a longer story with Bryan and Nakamura for the Intercontinental Championship. Heck, have it a threeway with Sami in the picture too! A dream match I’m sure all three men want to tick off their WWE opponent bucket list.
WWE is doing a good job of making Nikki Cross look like a strong babyface opponent for the heel Women’s Champion in Bayley. In the process, Cross has been having enjoyable matches that are helping other women on the roster get noticed.
Mandy Rose, supported by Sonya Deville, still looked impressive in her defeat to Cross. Not that it should come as a surprise, but the SmackDown Women’s title story is regularly one of the most entertaining parts of the show purely for how it manages to make everyone in the frame look good!
Things between Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez are actually starting to get interesting and finally have me invested just in time for Crown Jewel. Rey Mysterio, on the mic, demanded that Lesnar meet Velasquez in the ring tonight but Paul Heyman had other ideas. Appearing on the Titantron with The Best, the pair refused to meet Velasquez and instead, revealed that Lesnar had beatdown Rey’s son, Dominik, backstage.
Mysterio and Velasquez hurried backstage to find Dominik and call for support. However, this was a trap that saw Lesnar then lay waste to all three men before slamming Mysterio into a wall then hitting Velasquez with an F5 on to the poor lad Dominik.
I don’t know what he said, but Velasquez yelled something in Spanish backstage after the attack. He looked really mad, so I assume it was something about wanting to hurt Lesnar. Let’s see how this goes at Crown Jewel!
Opening the show was Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan on another exciting edition of Miz TV. Accompanied by a few members of their respective teams for Crown Jewel, every person took a turn at taking a shot at someone else opposite them. Whilst Ali insulted Sami Zayn for not being much of a wrestler these days, his replacement in Cesaro was a welcome addition to Team Flair. Roman Reigns really stood out as the star player in being the captain for Team Hogan with some great mic work to defend his team and put down King Corbin in the process.
Ignoring Shorty Chad Gable‘s awful attire, the main event that followed it was a fun preview of what the ‘Team Flair vs Team Hogan’ match will offer at Crown Jewel. All men got to showcase the best parts of their offence and Ali was able to pick up the win for the babyface team.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLSj0XKocoU]
For FOX Sake:
Sadly, Xavier Woods is set for a prolonged spell on the sidelines which saw Kofi Kingston back in tag action with Big E for The New Day. The pair have always had great chemistry but it is a shame to see Kofi falling down the ranks so soon after his reign as WWE Champion came to an end. What’s worse, they didn’t even get the win over Roode and Ziggler. Instead, Zigglypuff was able to roll up Kingston by holding onto his tights for the surprise win, pictured below where it looks as though Kofi is having his nappy changed.
The upside from this is that Heavy Machinery came out looking strong to make the save for The New Day after they were set upon by The Revival and RooDolph. Also, it might be time for a singles push for Big E if the tag team focus is shifting away from The New Day and towards the likes of Heavy Machinery.
Lacey Evans refused to fight a local competitor that she thought was beneath her standing only to run back in and land the 2K20 create a wrestler with a Woman’s Right for the quick win. Evans did have a point, as having this sort of squash match at this stage in her main roster run is rather pointless. It did nothing for her or the crowd who didn’t get anything out of this segment.
For the second week in a row, Drew Gulak wanted to show the same PowerPoint presentation from last week where he believes he can help Braun Strowman defeat Tyson Fury. This had nothing to do with his match with Kalisto, which he lost, and just served as a shoehorned segment to bring out Strowman who sees Gulak as “disrespectful”. Gulak got “these hands” once again and it was a shame he wasn’t allowed to just showcase his wrestling talents as he did on 205 Live – a show in which he often beat Kalisto.
All pics and videos courtesy of WWE