WWE Friday Night SmackDown Review: 30/10
Cody Rhodes Starts the Show, Chelsea Green VS Nikki Bella: WWE Women’s Championship
After Danhausen welcomed us to a special “Very Nice, Very Evil” edition of Friday Night SmackDown, Cody Rhodes made his way down to the ring to properly start the show! Cody wanted to apologise to Randy Orton’s kids, his wife, and the WWE Universe for what he’s going to do to him at Crown Jewel, as he needs to hand The Viper some receipts after how hard Orton punted him at WrestleMania! Cody then told the fans that he hopes that they have a great night, and let’s be honest, Rhodes said nothing of note here!
Grade: C
After Tiffany Stratton rejected Danhausen’s offer to trade teeth for human monies (i.e. Tiffany’s Money in the Bank Briefcase), Chelsea Green faced Nikki Bella in the opening match of the night with the WWE Women’s Championship on the line! Chelsea was dressed as Nikki, sort of because it was Halloween, but also because Green wanted to prove herself as “The Champion”! Unfortunately for Chelsea, this match wasn’t very good, and I wasn’t at all surprised! Nikki Bella is awful in the ring; I haven’t ever seen her have a good match, and this was anything but interesting! After a messy roll-up exchange, Chelsea Green was able to escape “and still”, before Liv Morgan came down to the ring to disrespect the WWE Women’s Champion, leading to another pretend cash-in attempt by Tiffany Stratton after both The Judgment Day and Iyo Sky arrived! I’m already bored of Tiffany with the Briefcase; it’s been 2 weeks of the same nonsense!
Grade: D
AAA World Cruiserweight Championship: Rey Fenix VS Ricky Saints, Jade Cargill VS Tatum Paxley, Danhausen’s Experiment Gets Revealed
Sami Zayn is sick of continuously being overlooked, despite the fact that he’s the current Undisputed WWE Champion, whilst Blake Monroe and Paige got into a heated war of words backstage! After weeks upon weeks of build, Ricky Saints finally got his shot at Rey Fenix’s AAA World Cruiserweight Championship! These two have had matches before, but this finally felt like a Title match that was notable! The wrestling involved was really good; there were some good near-falls, and Rey Fenix continues his reign as one of the best Champions in all of WWE! I hope WWE will do more with Ricky Saints, as he too is great, but for now, that moment will have to wait as an MMB was enough for Fenix to retain his Cruiserweight Title! My only knock on this match would be the fact that we knew that Rey was going to retain due to him defending the Title again on AAA tonight, but everything else was strong!
Grade: B
Michin and B-Fab don’t care what anyone thinks about them being the new WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, whilst Jacy Jayne was impressed that they pulled a move out of the Fatal Influence playbook! Trick Williams was then getting excited about the prospect of facing Roman Reigns for the Crown Jewel Championship, whilst Lil Yachty got petrified after he saw Danhausen bring The Gingerbread Man back to life! Anyway, Jade Cargill was dressed as Poison Ivy as she was set to go one-on-one with Tatum Paxley! It’s been nice to see the Main Roster audience praising Tatum Paxley for being good in the ring; I’ve always found her to be entertaining from the early days of NXT 2.0, so it’s nice to see her get some recognition! Sadly for Tatum, she’s not nearly seen on the same level as Jade, so after Alexa Bliss was taken care of, Cargill was able to drop Paxley with a Jaded to get the win!
Grade: C+
Damian Priest has his eyes set firmly on the Undisputed WWE Championship, although that will seemingly have to wait as FRAXIOM want to get their hands on him first! Danhausen would then appear on the stage to finally reveal his biggest experiment yet, only to get attacked by Gunther! This would then result in the Minihausen’s returning to try and make the save, only for The Ring General to destroy all of them, which included throwing pumpkins at them (that was pretty fun)! Danhausen would then curse Gunther, with the experiment finally being revealed as none other than The Demon King! For the first time ever, Gunther looked genuinely scared in the ring, with The Demon going insane as Finn Balor delivered an amazing Coup de Grace to The Ring General through the announce table! Danhausen and The Demon would then celebrate together in the ring, and as far as a Halloween segment goes, this was pretty fun! However, I have to give WWE a ton of credit as this has been a long-term story, dating back to The Miz and Matt Cardona being changed into their older selves by Danhausen’s experiments! Fair play; this was very well done!
Grade: B+
Undisputed WWE Championship: Sami Zayn VS Trick Williams
After a hype video for next week’s mammoth clash between CM Punk and Kevin Owens, the Main Event of this week’s special “Very Nice, Very Evil” edition of Friday Night SmackDown saw Trick Williams challenge Sami Zayn for the Undisputed WWE Championship! The crowd were quite into this match in the beginning; it felt more important than it probably should’ve been, and it nicely capped off a week of Zayn defending his Title against young up-and-comers! Trick would hit a Book-End at one point, only for Johnny Gargano to pull the referee out of the ring, as the ref decided that this was the match where you couldn’t do that, meaning he called for a disqualification! Yes, that’s right, a moment that happens in every match was finally ruled worthy of a DQ! Nick Aldis clearly thought that this was stupid, with him restarting the match as a No Disqualifications bout, whilst also banning Gargano, Candice LeRae, and Lil Yachty from ringside! Considering the stipulation that Aldis added to the match, that decision to ban everyone didn’t make a ton of sense, either, but there you go! The Trick Stick would then get used to full effect, only for Zayn to deliver a low blow to Williams, with Sami following that up with a belt shot to Trick to retain his WWE Title! What a mixed bag this show was!
Comments