SmackDown recap and reactions: A new challenger

It’s an old challenger taking another crack at a new crown. Plus, new tag titles unveiled, and more!

Cody Rhodes spent the past couple weeks cutting a few promos looking back on everything he accomplished at WrestleMania 40 while also setting up a future one-on-one showdown with The Rock. It’s entirely possible and maybe even likely this man will headline WWE’s biggest show of the year three years in a row.

As he himself said, though, that will depend on the title reign he can put together over the next year. To that end, this week’s episode of SmackDown was going to give us his first official challenger for the Undisputed WWE championship.

A mini tournament was held to find said challenger, with two triple threat winners meeting in a singles match to determine who would move on to Backlash in France. Those two ended up being WrestleMania 40 rivals LA Knight and AJ Styles.

It should really come as no surprise how it played out either.

They had a solid enough TV match, one that saw Styles get his win back over Knight by cheating with the old eye poke to give him an opening to hit the Phenomenal Forearm for the pinfall. It would have been a strange decision to have Cody’s first challenge be from a babyface everyone still loves, as opposed to a strong heel who is going to give him a damn good match.

Will the feud be any good? We’ll just have to wait and see about that.

Rhodes cut a promo via video from London, his first on Styles now that we know the match. He called it two Georgia boys duking it out and while he recognizes Styles rarely misses he doesn’t either. There wasn’t really much of anything here to get excited about but the contract signing happens next week.

Perhaps some heat then.

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Solo Sikoa and Tama Tonga showed up to the blue brand this week dressed to the nines. He was driven up in the same SUV we’ve seen The Tribal Chief arrive in so many times before him. The message seemed clear enough.

Paul Heyman seemed surprised at his attire, and his demeanor. Then, Sikoa asked if Kevin Owens was in the building and demanded to be taken to see him.

Later, Heyman was outright pleading with Sikoa, telling him he was making decision that are not his to make because, well, they can only be made by The Tribal Chief.

Get it?

Solo pushed ahead like he was annoyed by this and they went to the ring to talk about it. Heyman started in about the backstage politics surrounding The Bloodline and he was cut off by the fans chanting a surprise.

“We want Roman.”

Reading his lips, Sikoa, hearing this, responded “oh, NOW you do.”

He ripped the microphone away from Heyman and got enough heat that he could barely get his promo going. Last week he had to lose a brother, he said, in order to find a new one, his MFT, Tama Tonga. Just then, Owens was throw out on the stage bleeding heavily from his head, with Tonga trailing him, clearly responsible for it. Owens tried to fight back but he was overwhelmed. It took GM Nick Aldis rushing down to the ring and stepping in to put a stop to it.

The heels left to “you suck” chants. They got a ton of great heat for this entire segment, and it’s clear the next chapter in The Bloodline’s story is going to be a good one.

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Bayley’s first title defense was given the main event spot on this show, as she put her friendship with Naomi aside to square up for the women’s championship. Damage CTRL was seated in a press box, with Dakota Kai promising Iyo Sky will be coming back for the title she lost soon enough. Meanwhile, Jade Cargill & Bianca Belair joined the party in a press box right next to Damage CTRL, just to keep things as interesting as possible.

Then, they never really got involved in anything.

The match itself was fine, for what it was, which was simply a vehicle to get to Tiffany Stratton interfering and forcing a no contest. Bayley remains champion, her friendship with Naomi seemingly intact, and Stratton has put herself squarely into the title picture.

With the reaction she has been getting, that probably makes sense. They also need a strong heel to step in right now and if they don’t want to turn Belair and/or go back to her too soon, this makes as much sense as anything.

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All the rest

• Paul Levesque was back on television this week, as he made yet another appearance to introduce yet another new title design, this one for the tag team titles A-Town Down Under hold. They’ll now simply be known as the WWE tag team champions and the design looks far more like classic tag titles. For my money, they might be the frontrunners for the best title design in the company. Either way, this was a much needed change and we can officially put the Raw/SmackDown title branding to bed forever.
• They went about finding top contenders to A-Town Down Under’s pretty new titles by holding a Fatal 4-Way tag match pitting The Street Profits vs. New Catch Republic vs. Legado del Fantasma vs. AOP. This match made clear that the men’s tag division is actually fairly deep right now, and every single one of them deserve more time on television. This was an unbelievably fun match — whoever laid it all out deserves a LOT of credit — and in the end The Street Profits survived to set up a future match with Theory & Waller.
• WWE increased its efforts to make sure we are aware that Santos Escobar has claimed time and time again that he is not the one who took out Dragon Lee. Then he went out and beat Carlito in a singles match thanks to an assist from Elektra Lopez, who took care of Zelina Vega on the outside. It seems obvious where this is going, and Carlito taking losses like this only serves to make it even more so.

A solid show.

Grade: B-

Your turn.