Saturday, July 24, 2021

Friday Night SmackDown | Review-ish | Storyline Developments Aplenty

This episode of Friday Night SmackDown took place from Cleveland, Ohio and the Rolling Loud Festival from Miami, Florida, it was sure to be an entertaining two hours of television.  

Match Results
Finn Balor defeated Sami Zayn. 

Angelo Dawkins defeated Chad Gable. 

Bianca Belair successfully defended her SmackDown Women's Championship against Carmella.

Toni Storm defeated Zelina Vega.

Jimmy Uso defeated Dominik Mysterio.

SmackDown! Review-ish
John Cena opened the show to challenge Roman Reigns for the Universal Championship. Paul Heyman said the champion will answer later on in the show and imitated Cena's theme song while walking to backstage, a truly funny moment there. Finn Balor and Sami Zayn followed up their confrontation from last week with a match against each other, won by "The Prince" 

Big E talked about his victory at Money In The Bank, what a moment it was for him, and very well deserved also, E was interrupted by Apollo, followed by Dolph Ziggler, Bobby Roode, Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro, this led to a brawl. We may see a six man tag next Friday Night.

SmackDown shifted from Cleveland to Miami for the Rolling Loud Festival. Wale was the MC. The venue had a WrestleMania look to it. Angelo Dawkins got some revenge for Montez Ford by winning the match against Chad Gable, both Ford and Otis were ringside for this one. It appears we have finally seen the end of the rivalry, for now anyway, between Bianca and Carmella. The EST vs. The Boss is almost inevitable for Summerslam. Subject to change of course.

Edge and Seth Rollins continued their storyline build up for August 21st. Toni Storm made her main roster debut and marked it with a win against Zelina Vega. It has been a disappointing run for Vega so far, since she returned to the company, hopefully she will recover from this and build up momentum.

The end to the Jimmy Uso vs. Dominik Mysterio match was the exact same to the SmackDown Tag Team Championship at Money In The Bank, you will understand the reference if you saw the contest last Sunday.

Here we are, we have arrived at the main event. It was time to see if the Universal Champion. Roman Reigns was going to accept the challenge from John Cena. The answer was no, he went on to explain why. Finn Balor walked out to a nice reaction from the crowd and asked "The Head Of The Table" if he wasn't interested in Cena's challenge, would he be interested in the one from "The Prince"? Reigns smirked at first, and eventually accepted as the SmackDown went off the air.

Will Reigns vs. Balor just be a non-title match that takes place on an upcoming episode of SmackDown? or will John Cena be added to the mix at SummerSlam for the Universal Championship, we are just under a month from the best event of the Summer, lets see how this story develops next week.