This week’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown marked the first for the blue brand in its new era as a three hour show. There is plenty to be gained, and not much to be lost with going to such a format. All the talent who haven’t had as much to do are surely going to see more time on television, which will, in the long run, be good for everyone.
Having said that, it’s going to take some time to get used to having to dedicate three hours to WWE every Friday night. And that’s for someone whose job is to cover it. The idea of giving 8 pm ET to 11 pm ET every Friday night to pro wrestling just doesn’t make sense for most folks.
Then again, if the show is good it will find its audience.
So let’s see how WWE did with this first outing in 2025.
Cody Rhodes opened this show with a microphone to tell us he’s not actually cleared to wrestle just yet, and that’s because of Kevin Owens. He’s real mad at him!
And then Drew McIntyre’s music hit the loud speakers and wouldn’t you know it, that man walked out and gave the WWE champion a hug right there in the ring. He feels bad for the guy, he recognizes that he is the quarterback of WWE right now at its absolute deepest talent wise, and he’s here to help.
He doesn’t want to hurt Cody, he wants to help him.
Rhodes, of course, was suspicious of this. He flat out told McIntyre he didn’t believe him, even offering up a title shot. McIntyre maintained he was here for the right reasons.
All the way up to walking out and telling him “you need to watch your back” quite literally seconds before Owens attacked from behind. They had a damn good pull apart brawl before they were, uh, pulled apart and sent their separate ways.
They’ve done a fine job of keeping heat on all of this while also introducing a few interesting wrinkles, like this McIntyre appearance. Considering Triple H’s WWE has taught us every story intertwines and nothing is to be ignored, I’m intrigued on where they could be thinking of going with this beyond getting top stars bumping shoulders.
Oh my lord is Paul Heyman over like rover.
There’s nothing like the fans chanting along with a guy simply introducing himself.
He was here to cut a promo about the match coming up on Monday Night Raw next week — TRIBAL COMBAT! We will learn who the real Tribal Chief actually is when Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa square up to figure it out. Heyman admitted they trained Sikoa to be the next Tribal Chief, doing everything they could to get him ready.
But it isn’t time just yet.
The problem was Reigns couldn’t help himself at WrestleMania, the powerful emotions surrounding the breakup of The Shield still raging within him, and it leading to Cody Rhodes winning the title and Solo thinking he could run a coup. The Bloodline could be his, so he schemed up a plot.
He stole the Ula Fala. He recruited a band of misfits who aren’t welcome in the United States. He did all this because no one will acknowledge Solo. They still acknowledge the real and true Tribal Chief, the OTC, Roman Reigns.
Before Heyman could make it out of the ring, of course, Sikoa chose to join him there.
“I wanted you to know I’m about 10 seconds away from pissing in my pants.”
Heyman is too good.
He said he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened to him when he refused to acknowledge Solo last time. Heyman handed him the microphone when he asked for it and looked appropriately terrified.
Solo, surprisingly, asked for a favor. He needs someone he can trust, who loves his family, who would never disrespect that family, and would never disrespect the Ula Fala. So this Monday, if Reigns beats him, Heyman will put the Ula Fala around his neck and Solo will acknowledge him. But when he beats Roman, he expects Heyman to put the Ula Fala around his neck and it will be known he owns Heyman.
“You will be my Wiseman forever.”
We’re to a point now where they pretty much have to bring this story to a conclusion at Raw next week. They’ve done too many matches between Reigns and Sikoa already, and this Ula Fala business needs wrapping up before they get to whatever it is they want to do with the top names at WrestleMania. They’ve done well to keep Sikoa in the thick of it and compelling enough as the power hungry underling but it’s high time to move forward with The Bloodline story.
Surely it won’t be with Sikoa as Tribal Chief … right?!?
Later in the evening, Sikoa, Jacob Fatu, and Tama Tonga took on The Usos & Sami Zayn in a really fun six-man tag team match in the main event. Drew McIntyre made his presence felt late to distract Jey but ultimately wasn’t involved in the finish, as Uso got mixed up on who the legal man was and ended up taking a Spike from Solo to lose the match for his team. The idea was Drew didn’t help, certainly, and they’ll settle up on Raw next week.
This was the way they needed to go about this for all involved. It was perfectly strong build to the bigger show next week.
I am grateful.
It’s finally over.
The Money in the Bank contract is no more, and we have a new women’s champion in Tiffany Stratton.
I actually really liked how they got there too, as a sort of love letter to how silly the entirety of Stratton’s time with the briefcase actually was.
Naomi and Nia Jax had what was actually a fantastic match, with some awesome near falls that almost had me convinced they may have been considering a surprise change. It was good enough, in fact, that that I wasn’t even thinking about Stratton until her music hit.
And then I realized it was going to be another dumb tease, and sure enough to pretended to want to cash in before blasting the referee right after giving him the damn contract and using it to take Naomi out. That gave Jax the victory and had Corey Graves thinking it was all one big plan.
This would have sucked.
Instead, it was glorious because she finally turned on Jax by putting the briefcase in her back as she was celebrating, taking Candice LeRae out of the picture, and finally cashing in to win the title. They swerved the swerve and paid it off properly.
Hell yes.
This was a fantastic piece of business because it felt like it elevated everyone, including Naomi who looked incredible in defeat and did not have to take a clean loss.
All the rest
- Andrade got to come in second for his match against Shinsuke Nakamura, with an entrance that felt, at least to me, like they really want it clear to us they see this man as a much bigger deal than how he’s been booked since returning. And then they had a fairly standard match that saw Nakamura go over clean right there in the middle of the ring. LA Knight showed up during his celebration to run him off. He promised that what goes around comes around and that would be him stomping Shinsuke out. YEAH! I don’t know how much meat is left on the bone on this one, but they aren’t going away from it just yet.
- Pretty Deadly pissed off everyone lying about Legado del Fantasma attacking The Street Profits, from Santos Escobar and his crew to SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis. I just want this to mean they get more time on TV. Hey, three hours! Later, they showed up to help DIY during their tag team title defense against The Motor City Machine Guns, keeping Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa from losing the titles. Then, as Pretty Deadly was brawling with Legado del Fantasma they caused the match to be thrown out. The match was good until they did the non-finish but they’ve got a bunch of teams all hovering around the top of the division.
- Michin is still beefing with Chelsea Green, and that meant going one-on-one against her muscle, Piper Niven. The Women’s United States champion was ringside and then failed to do anything to help Niven in the match. Eat Defeat was all it took to give Michin the victory, and it’s only so long until they do this dance for the title once more.
This was still a relatively tight show, despite the fact that it was an hour longer than usual. They didn’t try to cram in too much, and I appreciated that.
It was good.
Grade: B+
Your turn.