Ladies and gentlemen, we have got another edition of Friday Night SmackDown to look forward to here his evening! Tonight, Braun Strowman finally challenges Shinsuke Nakamura for the WWE Intercontinental Championship! My name is Jordan Huie, and I’m so happy to have you here with us tonight! You are visiting the Overtimer, and as always, I’ll be giving you the deep dive coverage into WWE Friday Night SmackDown! We have four matches announced in advance for the evening, not at all a common occurrence in WWE. So I’ll be sure to take advantage of that and give you all the previews for every single one! And with that all in mind…
WWE Intercontinental Championship: Shinsuke Nakamura (c) vs. Braun Strowman
This… is kind of hilarious, right? Strowman first started making eyes at the IC title in November, he’s been feuding with Sami Zayn’s group for over two full months. He’s won non-title matches to earn the shot, repeatedly pinning the champion and then… they just totally skip the Royal Rumble PPV, and last month’s TLC PPV. They’re FINALLY doing the match… here tonight on SmackDown. Obviously plans change all the time in WWE and they kinda had to have here. But it’s one of those things that makes you scratch your head and wonder why it took so long to get here when it was just gonna be on a random SmackDown episode.
Honestly, it’s pretty likely that the end of this will still be on PPV in some capacity. Whether that’s Elimination Chamber or Super Show-Down, I can’t really say. I’m almost positive it wouldn’t be at Mania, they’d have surely known better than to start the build to this feud six months in advance if that were the plan. I mean we’re already running out of things to do here.
But yeah, in that vain, I’d expect some kind of screwy finish. Sami Zayn or Cesaro might end up causing a DQ, maybe Braun gets to be the dumbest babyface of the week and will end up chasing Sami around ringside until he gets counted out. Something like that. And this would, in turn, parlay into a rematch where Braun actually wins the title, probably at Super Show-Down if I had to guess. So uh yeah, for tonight, Shinsuke Nakamura retains his IC title.
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