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Hello everyone, welcome to WWE Smackdown on this Friday evening. We’re post Night of Champions and the WWE title is now with a man who resembles a bag of milk. This episode was taped on Monday, so if you want spoilers you can find them right HERE. Sami Zayn is getting his perfunctory title run right now, which objectively isn’t the worst thing. The Smackdown main event scene is pretty poor these days, Cody Rhodes is fine in the main event but Kevin Owens is still injured, Drew McIntyre is off with his movie, Randy Orton is off doing whatever the hell he’s doing, CM Punk’s horse is sick, and Smackdown has in general done a piss poor job of elevating people like Carmelo Hayes, Ilja Dragunov, or anyone else from the midcard last year into the main event scene. In an ideal world Brock Lesnar would show up tonight, give Sami the old Kofi Kingston treatment, and his match with Oba Femi could be for the WWE title. But instead Femi, despite winning King of the Ring, is not getting a title shot and the guy who lost in the finals gets one anyway. Because this is all fake and you shouldn’t invest in any of it, the WWE is just going to do whatever they want whenever they want. Sorry, that’s my own hang ups around the artifice of this genre getting pulled down and I shouldn’t project it that much onto all of you. But to that end expect Jey Uso to show up tonight in some capacity. Rey Fenix will defend the AAA cruiserweight title, which is now serving the role of workhorse belt since Trick Williams doesn’t ever defend the US title. On the women’s side of things they’re trying to push Michin and B-Fab along with Jade Cargill, but since we’ve still yet to receive a real update on WWE women’s champion Rhea Ripley they’re all messing around with Tiffany Stratton, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, and Chelsea Green. Blake Monroe showed up last week and attacked Giulia, which normally would be a good thing but I’ve just got no faith in Smackdown’s booking at this point so I can’t get super excited about it. The tag team scene is a wasteland, Damian Priest and R-Truth are champions but have spent that reign beating the Tongan Kids and one match with Fraxiom. Still nothing for Ilja Dragunov, Shinsuke Nakamura, Royce Keys, or anything like that. Oh but we’re building to a match between Gunther and Smackdown GM Nick Aldis. Aldis and Gunther got into things after Night of Champions so Aldis is currently not in charge of Smackdown, meaning Adam Pearce will be on hand tonight for official duties. So that’s the lay of the land, we’re mercifully back to just 2 hours now though so hopefully the show is good.

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