WWE is nearing Survivor Series: WarGames, which means determining the final additions to all the matches on the night. After “Raw” saw Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns join on Monday, it was time to sort the women’s side of the match in Denver on Friday night.
Ready for War
This was the week of finalizing the WarGames match teams, and after “Raw” with the men, the women received their turn in the “SmackDown” closing segment.
Advertisement
The face squad of Rhea Ripley, Iyo Sky, Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair came out simply to introduce their random fifth member, who was teased on Monday. It was AJ Lee, who is back from her mini break post-return match at Wrestlepalooza. All of that was set up to get her rival, Becky Lynch, on the other side when the heels attacked.
Lee seemingly didn’t notice the attack from the heels as she made her entrance, adding to the entrance meme list occupied by Jeff Hardy and Adam Copeland’s returning save moments in recent years. This always seemed like the direction WarGames was headed. It will end up being fun, but storyline-wise, this is all a thrown-together mess for the sake of the annual stipulation.
🤪 Cluelessness of the Night
The Usos are comedy gold. From their absurd character abandonment to actual kayfabe stupidity, nothing ceases to amaze me anymore.
Advertisement
“WWE SmackDown” started out with an empty WarGames hype promo from Paul Heyman and The Vision before The Usos interrupted. A brawl was teased to break down, as the twins were outnumbered — until Cody Rhodes’ entrance was teased. The Universal WWE Champion no-showed, but even if he arrived on the scene, they were still going to be outnumbered, making the scene all the more comical.
What was the reason for Rhodes’ absence? Well, the tron screens displayed Rhodes’ bus with Drew McIntyre walking out after a clear assault of the champion, who was bloodied, dangling out the door.
The Usos ran to the back and, upon reaching Rhodes, asked him what had happened. They literally saw what everyone else saw — then the show abruptly cut to a commercial. This was probably the most unintentionally hilarious opener segment of the year, and after last week, it might start to become a theme.
Advertisement
Clearing The Vision
Everything off the jump was goofy wrestling at its finest. However, once we saw the continuation in the John Cena retirement match tournament between Bronson Reed and Carmello Hayes — and it was excellent.
Of course, it was an overbooked mess, and Hayes was never going to win without help. But he did win, which is an incredibly welcome change to his booking. The dude continues to show how phenomenal he is, and this match was no different. As mentioned, though, he ultimately needed the aid of The Vision’s rivals, The Usos and Rhodes, to prevent a Bron Breakker spear DQ win.
That last part I didn’t even realize until typing it out, but The Usos should have let Breakker hit the move, giving Hayes the win.
Rhodes hit Reed with a Cross Rhodes outside the ring while Heyman distracted the referee, prompting the fastest 10-count ever to give Hayes the win. One of these tournament matches was bound to be affected by shenanigans, but if it meant getting Hayes to advance, it was worth it. It also doesn’t hurt that Rhodes’ promo afterward was damn good, and I loved the Steiner-Rhodes quote and reminder of his Brock Lesnar wins, in particular. Quality all around.
👍 FRIDAY NIGHT FIRE 👍
1. #DIY defeated Fraxiom. There were some shenanigans, as one might expect from #DIY, but these two are just excellent tag teams who always deliver great matches.
2. Penta defeated Finn Balor with the Mexican Destroyer to advance in the Cena retirement tournament. This was just a good, clean, wholesome match, as one would expect. Some of Balor’s kickouts were pretty surprising, too. Just an overall solid match.
3. Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss are back on good terms, which led to an apparent intervention of sorts between Flair and Rhea Ripley. There’s some fun mystery to not seeing how the conversation went — until the mystery was taken away.
👎 DOWN & OUT 👎
1. WWE decided to go fully cinematic for the Flair-Ripley reconciliation, which had no depth to it at all. Flair just listened to Ripley and accepted. This again highlights the issue of how often WWE has PLEs and forces stipulation elements and similar things. There should have been more time to bring these two to a common ground.
2. Jade Cargill and Chelsea Green had another backstage interaction after Giulia and Kiana James sought the latter. I don’t know why WWE is intermingling these women’s titles like this. It only further emphasizes the lack of direction the entire roster has been in with these wrestlers.
3. Penta and Rey Fenix were in the same building and on the same show without any teases of a Lucha Bros reunion. I won’t let this slide any longer.
Advertisement
4. The WWE Tag Team Champions, The Wyatt Sicks, have just been gone. The whole tag team division has taken a massive backseat after all the momentum it gained.
👑 Uncrowned Gem of the Night 👑
On “SmackDown,” this is just the Ilja Dragunov award, remember? It doesn’t matter who the opponent is; the U.S. Champion could make a five-star match against a broomstick. Tonight, it wasn’t a broomstick, but JD McDonagh.
I sure didn’t see that coming, and the Denver crowd couldn’t have given a single rip, as the poor Judgment Day man received no reaction from the crowd. That was kind of a bummer, but it could have been more a result of the faction entrance than something unique to McDonagh — although he’s mostly in workhorse mode right now, and still not a star.
Nonetheless, these two put on one hell of a banger, as they typically have been doing lately. Dragunov defended once again, but he just doesn’t miss. He’s the biggest reason to watch “SmackDown” right now, and it’s not even close.
Advertisement
👑 I give this show a Crown score of: 5/10. 👑