WWE Friday Night SmackDown Review: 22/05

Rhea Ripley Starts the Show, Shinsuke Nakamura VS Talla Tonga

This week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown kicked off with Rhea Ripley returning to the show after a week away! Rhea said that that week away was needed, but it seems like, in her absence, Jade Cargill has stepped up to the plate once again, wanting a rematch for the WWE Women’s Championship! Rhea is happy to give this opportunity to Jade at Clash in Italy, but before then, she has to worry about her upcoming 6-Woman Tag Team match at Saturday Night’s Main Event! This brought out her partners at the event, Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair, to say some things, with Charlotte not at all happy with Ripley for not being around to help them last week! After more bickering and terrible acting, Fatal Influence interrupted, reminding everyone that they’re still around (I honestly think that WWE themselves forgot), and all of this just led to a Tag Team match being set for later in the show! This Division sucks!

Grade: C-

Solo Sikoa made it clear to Tama Tonga that he needs everyone to be focused tonight, whilst Alexa Bliss told Charlotte Flair that she’d have to team up with Rhea Ripley against Fatal Influence, as Bliss is sick of always being in the middle of them! Shinsuke Nakamura then finally made his in-ring return as he took on Talla Tonga in the opening match of the night! It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen Shinsuke wrestle, at least that’s how it feels to me, and it’s definitely nice to still see him get a warm reaction! There wasn’t much to note about this match, however, and that was honestly the theme for basically this entire episode! Solo Sikoa got on the apron at one point to distract Nakamura, opening the door for Talla Tonga to hit his finisher to score the win! After the match was over, Tama Tonga stopped Solo Sikoa’s attempt at a Samoan Spike, but it was all just a ruse as Tama took Shinsuke Nakamura out himself! MFT then continued its onslaught, before Damian Priest ran down to make the save!

Credit: WWE

Grade: C

Tiffany Stratton’s United States Championship Open Challenge, Trick Williams VS Carmelo Hayes

Nick Aldis confirmed to Cody Rhodes that he will get Gunther to sign the contract for their match at Clash in Italy, whilst Sami Zayn wanted to find out what he was doing on tonight’s show! When Aldis said there wasn’t any space for him, Sami lost his mind, ripping into Cody Rhodes as Cody returned to set up a match between the two! It’s funny that Aldis said there wasn’t any time for Sami Zayn, and yet, over half of the matches that took place on this show weren’t scheduled beforehand! Anyway, after Tama Tonga told Solo Sikoa that he needs to beat Damian Priest on his own (remember those words, they’re very important), Tiffany Stratton was ready to host her first Women’s United States Championship Open Challenge! Can’t we come up with something else?! Anyway, Lash Legend was the one who answered Tiffany’s call, and I guess that kind of makes sense given who’s actually on this show, but I was kind of hoping for Blake Monroe! The match itself wasn’t that great; it was pretty scrappy, and there was seemingly no chemistry between the two performers! I have no idea what has happened to Tiffany Stratton, but she’s gone from arguably being one of the most entertaining females in all of WWE (and this dates back to NXT) to now being off in almost every match she has! This wasn’t good at all, and the only saving grace is that at least a storyline was developed in the form of Chelsea Green helping Stratton to retain! Sadly for the SmackDown Women’s Division, it’s not capable of holding strong Open Challenges like the Men’s US Title did!

Grade: C-

Throughout the night, there had been power outages in the arena, and Nick Aldis finally got to the bottom of it by realising that Danhausen had been creating experiments! Danhausen believed that everything was safe, which was clearly not the case, whilst Aldis was losing his mind! I’ll admit, this was quite funny! Speaking of funny, The Miz and Kit Wilson are fantastic together, and their disdain for Danhausen resulted in Miz getting himself a match with Axiom in Barcelona next week! Nice! Trick Williams and Lil Yachty were then out next to do more celebrating, but this wouldn’t last long as Carmelo Hayes interrupted! Carmelo was very clear in that he wanted a rematch for his United States Championship, which was completely fair given the fact that Trick cost him the Title in the first place! Despite all of their history, I’m not sure that Williams had any plans to accept Hayes’ challenge, until Melo brought up the fact that Trick’s always been better on the sidelines (which is a killer line)! This fired up Trick so much that he agreed to have the match, but importantly, the US Tite wouldn’t be on the line! I have absolutely no idea why we then got Trick Williams VS Carmelo Hayes in the middle of a pretty poor SmackDown; like, these guys are capable of having a top-PLE calibre feud, and yet we just did the match here? I can’t understand it! Also, on top of all of that, this match also couldn’t avoid interference, with Ricky Saints showing up after having previous history with both individuals! Trick clearly remembered this as he pushed Ricky away, leading to Saints jumping on the apron, which in turn distracted the referee, costing Melo a three-count! Williams then took advantage of this with a Trick Shot to Hayes to get the win, and honestly, whilst this was the best thing on the show up until now, it’s still a massive waste!

Grade: C+

Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair VS Fatal Influence, Damian Pries VS Solo Sikoa

Sami Zayn continued his assault on “water bottles”, whilst he then got into a conversation with “his friend”, Johnny Gargano! Ricky Saints was then bragging backstage, leading to Carmelo Hayes decking him, before Charlotte Flair was forced to team up with Rhea Ripley to take on Fatal Influence! Unless they’re fighting at WrestleMania, everything that Rhea and Charlotte do together is awful, like there’s no exception! I didn’t find any of this to be interesting, with Fatal Influence not exactly being made to look great either! The entire booking of this show is absolutely mindboggling, and it ended with Flair stealing the pin off Ripley! After the match was over, Jade Cargill, Michin, and B-Fab all jumped the good guys from behind, and this stuff just gets worse every week!

Grade: D

Cody Rhodes said he doesn’t recognise Sami Zayn right now, whilst Michin claimed that she, B-Fab, and Jade Cargill are the most dominant force in all of women’s wrestling! These three should get stuck with The System in TNA, because what?! Anyway, Damian Priest was then out next as he was set to go one-on-one with Solo Sikoa! At least he was supposed to, given what Tama Tonga had said earlier in the night! However, clearly someone forgot about that as basically, this entire match was just Priest having to fend off interference after interference from the MFTs! It’s honestly unbelievable at this point, like I’ve given up trying to be positive about this show, because it just sucks! How can they have a segment where Tama Tonga tells Solo that he needs to win on his own, only to help him win! I give up! Anyway, after the match was over, Royce Keys ran down to make the post-match save, but clearly, Priest still doesn’t trust him!

Grade: E

After Brie Bella and Paige talked about how they’ve been fighting Champions, Blake Monroe finally made her WWE Main Roster debut in a backstage segment with Chelsea Green! This led to Chelsea getting flattened by Nia Jax, before Damian Priest warned Royce Keys to stay out of his way! I’ll be honest, Chelsea as a Babyface could work quite well, so I’m intrigued to see how that goes!

Cody Rhodes VS Sami Zayn

And in the Main Event of this week’s edition of Friday Night SmackDown, “friends” collided as Cody Rhodes faced off against Sami Zayn! I feel very much like this was a taster match for these two, as I feel like they could easily have a PLE feud down the line! This was also definitely the match of the night; it flowed a lot better, and it was easily miles better than anything else on this show, match-wise! However, unbelievably, not even this match could avoid interference, with Gunther showing up at one point to try and choke Cody out! Sami then tried to take advantage of this, but he failed miserably, as Rhodes recovered to hit a Cross Rhodes to get the win! After the match was over, Gunther re-assaulted Cody Rhodes, with Sami Zayn just watching on as The American Nightmare passed out! Cody hasn’t helped Sami in the past, so why should Zayn?!

Credit: WWE

Grade: B-