Ladies and gentlemen, WWE SmackDown is in progress as I type this and we have just seen our opening match come to a close! And no, turns out, it wasn’t that triple threat between King Corbin, The Miz and Daniel Bryan after all. You might say it’d be silly to be so easily tricked there but NXT has made opening with major matches commonplace and it’s not like Raw and SmackDown haven’t put on the only advertised match on first a few times recently as well.
Anyway, instead, our opener was a six man tag team match, which saw Braun Strowman & the New Day take on Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro, a match that had been foreshadowed a bit the week before.
You can see an excerpt of my recap of this match below:
Hot tag to Braun and it’s legit pretty damn hot! Runs through his opponents, huge clothesline in the corner on Shinsuke! He bails as the crowd pops, Braun signals for the spin around, and he rushes around ringside to get shoulder blocks in on Shinsuke, then Cesaro, chases Sami around, Nakamura with a flying knee off the steps cuts him off!
Back in the ring, Shinsuke charges, but eats a huge clothesline! Braun picks him up for the Powerslam, Cesaro pulls Shinsuke free, Springboard Uppercut! E drags Cesaro to the floor and drives him into the barricade. Sami Zayn passes Shinsuke Nakamura the pancake platter and distracts the ref, Kofi Kingston grabs the platter away from him, smacks Shinsuke in the head with it, Braun with the Powerslam for the win!
Winners: The New Day & Braun Strowman
It was a pretty good match, and one with a pretty sensible finish all things considered. Strowman pins the IC Champion once again as he continues to chase him down for that title. He does it with the help of Kofi this time around however.
