It’s Friday Night SmackDown time! Announced to occur on tonight’s pre-taped episode of the show according to WWE.com:
Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey are set to take part in a Beat the Clock “I Quit” Challenge
Sami Zayn will be locked inside a steel cage to prevent escape from Drew McIntyre
Ricochet puts Intercontinental Title on the line in battle with Shanky
RK-Bro and The Usos contract signing for Tag Team Title Unification Match
Join us back here at 5pm PST / 8pm EST / 1am BST for all the SmackDown action! We hear it was a good one!
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9:53pm
Flair and Aliyah
Flair takes on Aliyah. She has 1:41 to be her. Flair is having some trouble with Aliyah. She takes her too lightly.
She finally gets her in the Figure 4 at 1:31 and it takes she survives for 10 seconds. She taps about 3 seconds after the time runs out.
Flair is pissed. Rousey celebrates. Aliyah and Shotzi look like losers because they both tap in under 2 minutes.
After the match, Flair is looking for someone to take her frustration out on. Gulak has been on bell-ringing duty all night. She blames him for not ringing the bell at the right time. So, she beats him up.
This makes no sense. The clock was on the television. It’s clear Aliyah didn’t tap in time. He didn’t do anything wrong and that wouldn’t be the person to blame. Either way, Flair stands tall to get some heat back. On to Rampage…
Ronda Rousey faces Shotzi for her beat-the-clock challenge match. Shotzi runs away and runs around the ring at the beginning of the match. Eventually, she can’t run away.
Rousey catches her and locks her in the ankle lock. Rousey forces Shotzi to tap in 1:41. Can Flair beat that? Flair gets in the ring and talks some trash to Rousey. Rousey mean mugs her and Flair has her match next.
Sheamus faces off with Kingston. His goal was to show Holland and Butch how to get the job done. He beats Kofi Kingston. The match was short and pretty uneventful.
After the match, Holland puts Woods through a table. Butch did not make an appearance. The New Day is left behind in a pile of rubbish. This feud has felt like it has gone on for months.
Speaking of things that are going on forever, we get another installment of The Saga of Lacey Evans. Imagine your dad never shows up to any of your important events. Nothing could be worse. I guess he could have been dead and not had that options. She says the other ladies in the locker room haven’t had it hard like her. I wonder if any of them have? After the first one or two, I felt bad for her and sympathetic. This one sounded a bit whiny. I could be in the minority on this one.
No one can find Butch? Hopefully, he didn’t get released. Ridge Holland is in action tonight against Xavier Woods. I have to assume Butch is going to come out of nowhere to attack New Day during this one. Before the match, New Day points out that Sheamus has had a bunch of partners in his day. They call him Shake-it Sheamus. I don’t even know what that means.
Anywho, after a match that I feel like I’ve seen 1000 times already, Xavier Woods wins via roll-up. That’s two in a row that ended in a roll-up. Sheamus is hot. So, he’s going to show Holland how it’s done. He’s going to face Woods next.
Before the match, Heyman approaches Adam Pearce and tries to talk him into making the tag team unification match into a 6-man between The Bloodline vs. Drew McIntyre and RK-Bro. I guess that is how they are getting around the title unification. Personally, I was quite looking forward to the 2 on 2 match-up.
Glow time is here. Naomi gets a very quick win in a pretty short match. After the match, Natalya and Shayna attack the champs. Shayna does the arm stomp on Naomi. Nattie takes out Sasha. That was a nice little post match attack. Will they be able to defend their titles?
There’s a contract signing. What can go wrong? I’m sure everything will be okay. Nothing physical will happen.
The Usos call themselves the ones. Orton calls one of them a B*tch. The fight breaks out. As Orton and Riddle get the upper hand, Roman comes out. The music was just a distraction. The Usos attack from behind.
Riddle is left in the ring after some superkicks. Roman rips up the contract and stuffs the remains in Riddle’s mouth. As they are about to beat up Riddle, Drew McIntyre’s music hits. Drew takes out both Usos on his way to the ring.
He climbs in the ring and walks up to Roman. They exchange blows. Drew sends Roman packing. Drew and Reigns stare each other down. No one signed the contract. Will the match actually happen?
Raquel is taking on Cat Cardoza who apparently badmouthed the hometown during the commercial break. Cat is on the prowl early and tries to attack Raquel as the bell rings. It didn’t do much damage.
Raquel dominates early on. Cardoza gets a bit of offense in as the match wears on, but the match was never really in doubt. Rodriguez hits the one-armed powerbomb. Apparently, it is named the Chingona Bomb. Rodriguez is being presented like a big deal. I’m not sure the match lived up to the hype. Cardoza got in a lot of offense considering she is an unknown as well.
We get a promo from Gunther and Ludwig. Gunther is scary.
Shanky is taking it to Ricochet. Shanky hasn’t had a lot of tv time, but the big man moves pretty well, especially when you compare him to some of the other 7 footers of the past. At one point, Shanky throws Ricochet into the ropes which allowed Ricochet to “ricochet” off them to get some momentum.
Ricochet went off the top rope, but Jinder Mahal interferes. Shanky looks like he is going to hit a Wasteland on Ricochet, but Ricochet reverses it. Ricochet rolls up Shanky for the win. After the match, Shanky tells Jinder to talk to the hand and it appears Jinder and Shanky are splitting up.
We get a backstage promo from Raquel Rodiguez. She talks about looking good and being the center of attention. Michael Cole called her sturdy. I’m not sure sturdy is a compliment to many women. Alas, she is sturdy though.
Well, Happy Corbin is out. He runs down Madcap Moss and his terrible jokes. I can’t disagree that his jokes were terrible. Corbin brings out his guest, The Andre the Giant Battle Royal Trophy. He promises to destroy it.
Problem! The guy who brought it down to the ring was none other than Madcap Moss. Moss reveals himself and tries to attack Corbin with a sledgehammer. The two fight in the ring until Corbin escapes Moss and the sledgehammer.
Corbin runs up the ramp. Moss laughs like a hyena in the ring. At one point he kissed the trophy. Hilariously, he kissed Andre right on the butt.
Okay. Drew McIntyre and Sami Zayn are battling in a steel cage. They are in a cage because Sami has been running away week after week. So, a cage match was created to keep the guy from being able to run away. This was a staple of booking for years. Yet, somehow, WWE started adding the option of escaping the cage. So, in theory, the idea is that Sami Zayn is supposed to escape the cage to beat Drew McIntyre. Makes sense right?
Regardless, the early portion of the match is Zayn trying to escape and Drew trying to destroy him. Drew McIntyre picks up the big win. I didn’t think Sami Zayn had any shot at winning this one coming in, but there was a point where I thought he was during the match. Sami had climbed out of the cage and looked like he was going to win.
Instead, Drew grabbed him by the hair and brings him back into the ring. He gave him a huge superplex back into the ring. McIntyre set up for the Claymore and boom. Sami is down for the count. Drew wins. He celebrates with his big sword on the top of the cage.
We get a recap of the contract signing between Flair and Rousey last week. Hey, we get another contract signing tonight. You can never have too many contract signings.
Flair is backstage with Kayla. She promises to embarrass Rousey at Backlash.
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