To say we have a unique SmackDown ahead of us tonight would probably be an understatement…
After last week’s record low viewership with FS1, this week we should have had the coronation of the Fiend after his Universal title win yesterday. Except, well… we don’t even know if he’s among the few that made it back in time.
Doing a preview of this is gonna be a little difficult but I’ll do my best.
Bayley will be defending the SmackDown Women’s Championship against Nikki Cross.
Nikki earned her No. 1 contender’s status a couple of weeks back after winning a six-pack challenge. Obviously this match was going to happen eventually, but given the circumstance they’ve gone ahead and moved it up to tonight. Considering Survivor Series is likely to pit Women’s tag champs against each other rather than put on regular defenses, it’s probably a good decision to put it on here. If these two are to square off on PPV it’s likely not gonna happen until December, so… they were never gonna hold it off for that long anyhow.
WWE Champion Brock Lesnar will be appearing live after his quick defeat of Cain Velasquez.
Lesnar and presumably Paul Heyman will be here to address the events of Crown Jewel and, one would think, set up whatever is next for the Beast.
Aaaaaand there we have everything that’s been confirmed as of now. No, seriously.
As of a few hours ago it appeared that the New Day vs. Revival SmackDown tag title match was still on, as was Bray Wyatt’s appearance on MizTV. But unfortunately it seems they aren’t making it for the show after all. The tweet of this was deleted and WWE.com’s preview has been stripped nearly threadbare. Kofi Kingston was actually quoted on their website in a press release on how things unfortunately got out of their control, despite their best efforts to make it on time.
“Daniel Bryan, The Miz, Carmella, Nikki Cross, Dana Brooke — plus, additional surprises” are noted in the same press release.
We do know that NXT superstars are in the building.
With NXT now in play at Survivor Series, this is atleast a pretty good window for them to get involved and possibly plant seeds for interbrand matches. This would actually be the time to start doing that anyway, with the event a little over four weeks away. So it’s a good chance to make lemons into lemonade, and get some exposure for top stars of NXT in the process. With any luck, they could get a bump in ratings on Wednesday out of it.
There are rumblings that this is basically Triple H’s show tonight, which should help ensure that any NXT guests are in good hands, should they appear. It’s also been generally intimated that newer folks in general will be getting an opportunity to shine, with 205 Live roster members fairly likely to appear as well.
It’s gonna be a very, very different episode to be sure, and I have to admit I’m quite interested in seeing what they do. I’ll of course be doing a live play-by-play as it occurs, less than an hour from this posting.
