WWE Friday Night SmackDown Review: 17/10

Cody Rhodes Starts the Show, Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair VS ZaRuca: WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships

After a recap of The Vision’s shocking betrayal on Seth “Freakin” Rollins, Nick Aldis announced that tonight’s Main Event between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu will now be a Number 1 Contender’s Match for the Undisputed WWE Championship, and this is when Cody Rhodes came out to properly start this week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown! Cody said that he and Seth never need to fight again following Crown Jewel before he said he was excited to see who his next challenger is going to be! Honestly, that was literally all that was said, Cody spoke for about 2 minutes!

Grade: C

Credit: Fightful

After Solo Sikoa and his MFT’s beat up Rey Fenix backstage, we headed into the first match of the night as Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair put their WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships on the line against ZaRuca! This match very much benefited from having an NXT lineup of Vic Joseph and Corey Graves, with both guys being able to put ZaRuca over far better than Michael Cole would’ve! I thought this was a pretty decent match, Sol Ruca looked great, and it was all leading up to Charlotte Flair making the hot tag! Despite this, Sol was still on top, but she took her off the ball when she interacted with Blake Monroe, opening the door for Flair to deliver a signature chop-block! Flair then followed it up by locking in the Figure-8, forcing Ruca to tap out! This furthered multiple things, so this was more worthwhile than usual!

Grade: B-

Sami Zayn’s United States Open Challenge, Los Garza VS Motor City Machine Guns

Cody Rhodes seemed pretty happy with Jacob Fatu’s plan to challenge him for the Undisputed WWE Championship, before Aleister Black and Zelina Vega talked about being a “necessary evil” whilst having a snake slither around them (and on Vega)! I have to say, this felt very Harry Potter-like! The Miz then spoke to Nick Aldis about an idea before Sami Zayn questioned why he wasn’t booked for the show! When Aldis answered by saying that it was to do with The MFT’s, Sami made it clear that he wouldn’t stand for that as he headed down to the ring to host another United States Championship Open Challenge! The call was answered first by The Miz, but in a nice reversal of a few weeks ago, Carmelo Hayes attacked Miz from behind to stop that from happening! This then opened the door for Ilja Dragunov to make his long-awaited return, challenging for the United States Championship in his first match in well over a year! Wouldn’t you know it, this match was pretty special! I’ve seen a lot of great wrestling over the past couple of weeks, but this is right up there with the best when it comes to the actual in-ring action! Ilja was as fired up as ever, repeatedly delivering hard shots to Zayn who kept fighting back! There was also great drama, particularly when Dragunov kicked out of the Blue Thunder Bomb, and this later led to Solo Sikoa appearing on the stage! This distracted Zayn a little bit, opening the door for Dragunov to deliver both the Torpedo Moscow and a H-Bomb to get the win, meaning The Mad Dragon is your new United States Champion! The celebrations didn’t last long as both men (and Rey Fenix) got laid out by The MFT’s, only for The Wyatt Sick6 to arrive to have a stare down with their latest rivals! I have to say, I never once thought about Ilja Dragunov being the guy to dethrone Sami Zayn, but I honestly think this was the best decision WWE could’ve made; this ruled!

Credit: WWE

Grade: A-

Tiffany Stratton stated that one loss doesn’t define her, and this led to Kiana James telling Tiffany that she wasn’t good enough, resulting in a match being made for next week! After going down memory lane, the Motor City Machine Guns were back facing Los Garza, a year after they debuted in WWE! This was another good match on this show; both teams are really good at what they do, and that meant they produced a fun and simple match! It was pretty clear that the Motor City Machine Guns were going to win, but that’s okay sometimes; that didn’t take away from the action! Once the match was over, FRAXIOM talked about what they need to do to get a shot at the WWE Tag Team Championships, and this is when DIY made their return to TV to take shots at Axiom (and his mask)!

Grade: B-

Undisputed WWE Championship Number 1 Contender’s Match: Drew McIntyre VS Jacob Fatu

The Main Event of this week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu… didn’t happen! Fatu was found backstage, completely wrecked with a bloody mouth, and this was done to write him out for a while! This is when Drew McIntyre came down to the ring, demanding that the referee declare him as the new Number 1 Contender, and this very much angered Nick Aldis! However, someone who was even more annoyed was Cody Rhodes, as Cody quickly agreed to face Drew with the Undisputed WWE Championship on the line, or so we thought! For some reason, it was never actually confirmed whether the Title was on the line here, but it didn’t really matter as this felt like a bit of a free-for-all before Rhodes smashed McIntyre in the face with his Championship! This caused the DQ finish, and security had to come out to stop things from escalating further! To say that The American Nightmare was pissed would be an understatement, but overall, I thought this was all executed quite well!

Credit: WWE

Grade: B