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There was a dark cloud hanging over Friday night SmackDown this week, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t harder to watch the show considering the outside circumstances, let alone review it. Vince McMahon resigned in disgrace and let’s hope he’s finally gone.
The show, however, goes on.
Of course, we’ll be covering The Bloodline and its story as the main feature of this week’s episode, as it usually is, but I have to mark a little first.
Because:
Wow, that trick!
I’ve been a big supporter of Trick Williams for a long time; just ask our NXT reviewer Marcus, who’s had to listen to me talk about him on company Slack since he appeared there, and seeing the reaction to him here makes me feel. Even more justified is my belief that he is a big star in the making. He has the looks, skills and charisma of someone who should be on a stage much bigger than the Performance Center, with all due respect to what they are doing in NXT.
Carmelo Hayes is fantastic, but you just can’t tell me that Trick doesn’t have the main event in his future. You just can’t. The sooner this guy gets to the main roster for good, the better off we’ll all be.
He still has a championship to win in NXT, but they need to get him here ASAP!
Roman Reigns was not in Miami for this show, and that left the other three men in the Fatal 4-Way at Royal Rumble to sell the match. Randy Orton opened the night with a short promo getting the crowd excited about the idea that he will emerge victorious. Naturally, AJ Styles appeared on the scene to express his disagreement with that.
He was also not happy with last week’s RKO and promised he would get a receipt.
They did a great synchronization when Styles said that at the Rumble he would go over Reigns, Orton and, as the music indicates, LA Knight. It was amazing and got a huge pop.
The man is still as washed up as he was a couple of months ago, at least with the live crowds.
For his part, Knight claimed that Paul Heyman pushed for him to fight Solo Sikoa on this show to soften him up for the Rumble because they know he is the biggest threat. He ran away and Styles took advantage of the distraction to deliver the receipt he promised.
A pretty standard segment, and there’s really not much they can do to convince us that any of these guys have a chance. But they made it quite entertaining.
Later, Jimmy Uso approached Styles backstage and asked for his help dropping off Knight later that night. After all, he would help them both in the Rumble. When the rest of The OC came up and asked about it, Styles simply said “don’t worry” and stormed off.
Intrigue?
Meanwhile, Heyman was telling Sikoa to fix the problem this week, something he didn’t do last time, and to “not be merciful.” He then he was hyping Jimmy to enter the Royal Rumble, win it, attack an injured Seth Rollins, and bring the World Heavyweight Championship to The Bloodline. And then, he hey, maybe the next Tribal Chief could be…
Intrigue!
So how did the main event play out?
Well, Styles actually went ahead and did exactly what Jimmy asked: he helped eliminate LA Knight. When Jimmy pretended to bring AJ a chair, he waited and instead handed it to him, telling him to continue attacking Knight. Solo then openly demanded that he take care of it “or I’ll take care of you.”
This wouldn’t be a complete turnaround, as Styles turned the chair on The Bloodline. Eventually, Orton joined the party and, well, led the rest of the show, standing tall as the credits rolled.
Only for Knight to recover, hit him with a Blunt Force Trauma and his music plays just as FOX fades away.
A pretty good final segment leading into the match, especially considering Reigns wasn’t involved.
All the rest
- Carlito and Santos Escobar’s match turned into an all-out melee match as LWO and Legado del Fantasma battled outside the ring. That ended up being a distraction from the big news that came out of this: the debut of Elektra López, who appeared to eliminate Zelina Vega and help Escobar roll up Carlito for the victory. It seems like she’s realigned with Legacy, and it makes all the sense in the world to have her back in this role.
- The new General Manager of NXT, Ava, made an appearance on this show asking Nick Aldis for advice. She hung out all night taking notes while they re-did the part where the wrestlers get their Royal Rumble number from the glass. You know the deal: some liked her drawing, others not so much.
- The Kabuki Warriors won the women’s tag team titles from Kayden Carter and Katana Chance, beating them cleanly in a fun match and giving Damage CTRL almost all the gold in the women’s division. The timing is perfect, considering this means Bayley is the only active member of Damage CTRL without a championship and has vowed to win the Royal Rumble so she can challenge Rhea Ripley for her title. He adds another layer to that story and adds some risks to a game that already has plenty of them. Well played all around. However, I feel a little bad for Carter and Chance, who were still trying to regain their footing. However, they showed that they can hang.
- Lashley & The Profits were supposed to have a one-on-one with The Final Testament but instead, Karrion Kross sent Scarlett to the ring and stayed back to say they wouldn’t give them the match they wanted tonight. Of course, it was all a distraction, and when the Profits rushed to start the fight anyway, Scarlett jumped on Lashley’s back and that allowed Kross to take him down. The trap was set, the plan was executed to perfection, and they received a lot of heat for it. This was pretty cool and fits well with the general theme of Kross’ recent promotions. Who is really in control here?
This was a strange show, considering the news of McMahon’s resignation broke in the middle, but outside distractions aside, it was actually a fun show with a great crowd.
Grade: B+
Your turn.