In this WrestleTalk News, WWE’s planned Money in the Bank winner revealed? A major
update on Drew McIntyre’s WWE future and Tempest’s review of Smackdown.
Subscribe and enable notifications to always on
for daily wrestling news videos. [SUPPORT WRESTLETALK]
We may be two weeks removed from WrestleMania 39 but I’ve got to say, I still haven’t managed
to wash that bitter taste out of my mouth. Yes, that is mostly related to Cody’s loss to Roman
in the main event… but y’know what matches that in my tier list of disappointments? Not seeing
LA Knight get his LA moment at the show of shows. Aww… man that pop would have been oh so glorious.
While WWE chose to give said moment to the likes of Pat McAfee and… Shane-o-Mac instead,
fear not as WWE may actually be set to redeem themselves very soon.
Despite now being in the severe post-Mania comedown, the always exciting Money in the
Bank is not too far away, coming to us on July 1st from our own backyard in London. And who does WWE
reportedly have earmarked for a big win at the event? None other than LA Knight (Yeahhhh).
According to WRKD Wrestling on Twitter the ‘Mega Star’ is being “discussed internally”
within WWE as the potential winner of the men's ladder match. Which would obviously
immediately grant him a MEGA push as a result, that is unless he immediately
loses to Roman. Oh god there’s no way he’s gonna successfully cash-in is he?
Ahh no no, I refuse to let the ever-looming cloud of the Tribal Chief spoil this moment. C’mon WWE,
Knight is ready to be pushed to the moon. Do it. Now in stark contrast to LA Knight,
one man who has had to get used to not being pushed much as of late is Drew McIntyre.
The Scottish Warrior’s WWE stock has disappointingly dipped significantly
since the Thunderdome era, where he reigned as a two-time WWE Champion. While of course
he came oh so close to dethroning Roman Reigns at September’s Clash at the Castle,
he of course couldn’t get the job done unfortunately.
Despite being involved in the very well-received
triple-threat Intercontinental Title match with Gunther and Sheamus at WrestleMania,
the day before said match a report would cast doubt over Drew’s future in WWE.
PWInsider reported that McIntyre’s WWE deal was up in 2023, with neither party close
to agreeing new terms. While following his Mania loss on Sunday the 2nd April,
he would tweet some waving hand emojis, suggesting an exit could be imminent.
This was then furthered by PWTorch’s Wade Keller who reported that Drew had
been pulled from last week’s Smackdown as well as a planned signing event that same Friday.
While Keller did suggest that this could have been done for health reasons as McIntyre was
reportedly “beat up” following Mania, Keller would also reveal McIntyre wasn’t satisfied
with either his current creative or the finances involved in a prospective new deal from WWE.
AND FINALLY now we may have our biggest clue as of Drew’s future yet. Not only
would McIntyre not feature on Smackdown yet again, but he would also completely
black out his Twitter profile and delete all mention of WWE from his profile.
While this is alarming, as of right now McIntyre has not done the same
to his Instagram. Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp would state that he has
reached out about Drew’s status, but as of yet there has been no further word.
While stars such as Seth Rollins have done this ‘blackout’ thing in
the past for kayfabe related reasons, it’s hard to say McIntyre’s situation
is the same considering all the other reports regarding his contract status.
According to the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer McIntyre’s current deal “runs well past” AEW’s
All In show on August 27th, so theoretically they should have plenty time to sort this out.
What do you think? Is this all just playing into a larger story
or is McIntyre actually leaving WWE?
Praise be to the New World Oli. I’m Tempest and this is my review of SmackDown in about 5 minutes.
We open the show with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and they celebrate their WrestleMania win and say
no matter what show they end up on after the WWE Draft they will still defend the undisputed wwe
tag team titles. I really hope they commit to this brand split thing because last I checked,
Sami Zayn was a SmackDown wrestler and Kevin Owens was a Raw wrestler and those distinctions
have meant diddly dick over the last six months. So again let’s rite that ship. They also say that
The Usos won’t be far away looking for a rematch at which point they came out and said Sami keeps
going on about the cracks in The Bloodline but the bloodline is stronger than ever and The Usos
will become 9 time tag team champions. Jey says he’s kept waiting for Kevin to stab Sami in the
back but he’s realized that it’ll be Sami stabbing KO in the back like he did for his entire family.
Sami and Kevin say let’s fight, the bloodline says bet, Riddle comes out to even the odds and
they brawl. This was a fine way to open up the show but I really feel like this storyline has
run aground creatively. Practically nothing new was said in this segment and we need some new
story beats to justify this story continuing post mania and Riddle just ain’t enough. ⅗
We then had a prerecorded promo from Xavier Woods and then our first match of the night
between Woods and LA Knight. The work in this match was pretty good with some fun spots like
Woods missing a sliding kick to the outside only for Knight to throw him backwards into the apron,
Woods hitting a double footstomp while Knight was hanging on the ropes, and a nice leg drop
off the ropes from Woods but then we got the finish which was Knight rolling up Woods and
grabbing the tights right in front of the referee and being admonished only for Woods to then roll
him up while grabbing the tights and getting the three. On one hand turn abouts fair play,
on the other why is a babyface cheating, but the main takeaway is whose f***ing dog did LA
Knight run over to be getting this treatment? Man got himself over organically, can talk,
can wrestle, and yet he’s eating pins in the middle of the card. I don’t get it. ⅗
At the very least that loss meant something to someone or more accurately that win
meant something as Imperium are talking backstage when Xavier Woods bothers them
with his trombone playing. Walter says Woods has his attention but shows him no
respect and will therefore beat the respect into him and Woods says he is going to beat
Walter for the IC title and take it with him to whatever show he gets drafted to.
Riddle is backstage with KO and Sami and Sami tells him to be careful with Solo
and KO gets him fired up and Riddle says there are lots of things he can’t control
but what he can control is what he does to Solo Sikoa for putting him out of action.
The Judgment Day get introduced backstage and Kayla makes them mad for saying last
week Zelina Vega embarrassed Rhea. They then go to the ring where Damian Priest shows us a
recap of what happened to Bad Bunny and then the LWO’s music hits and Zelina comes out,
distracting the group as the LWO hit them from behind and run away to the outside. We then got
our match of Santos Escobar vs Damian Priest and again this was solid stuff. Priest was
able to cut Escobar off with a big uppercut on the outside while Escobar was eventually able
to hit a hurricanrana off the top rope. Things broke down outside the ring and Priest took out
Joaquin Wilde and Cruz del Toro, Rhea tripped Escobar and Zelina hit her with a hurricanrana
but Priest hit the South of Heaven for the win. After the match the LWO were still getting beaten
up and Rey Mysterio came out to fight Dominik and then Judgment Day all scampered away. This
feels like their way of setting up Zelina Vega and Rhea Ripley for the women’s title but it
is getting particularly tiresome to see Legado del Fantasma or the LWO just get beaten like a drum on
this show. Santos hasn’t won a match on tv since January 6th. Give the poor lads something. ⅗
Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez come out with their beyblade belts and they can’t
an exorbitant amount of pyro. More pyro than any wwe women’s tag champs have ever had outside of
WrestleMania and even then I’d have to go back and check. Raquel thanks Liv and they get interrupted
by Sonya and Chelsea who make fun of the crowd and say that Adam Pearce is overlooking them and
where is their title shot and it is at this time that I’d like to remind you that the qualifying
match to compete at WrestleMania is the only match that Sonya Deville has won since August.
Just thought I’d throw that in there. Liv says that they’ve found their next challengers and
the fight for a few seconds before Chelsea and Sonya bail. I would really love for title shots
to be earn through repeated wins but I guess we don’t have any tag teams in this division. Boo. ⅖
We then got the return of Shinsuke Nakamura who has a new robe. He took on Madcap Moss
and my guy. Just. Holy s***. Emma tells him backstage that people should be cheering for
him out there and Shinsuke has nothing on him. Shinsuke never won the Andre the Giant
royal memorial battle royal but he has. Need I remind you that Shinsuke Nakamura has won the
ROYAL RUMBLE. Madcap then comes out and kicks in a TV? The match starts and Madcap jumps him,
hits, and I use that word very loosely, the worst fallaway slam of all time which deeply offends me,
a connoisseur of the fallaway slam, and then Nakamura just hit his kicks and a Kinshasa
for the win. Moss tried to jump him again after the bell and Shinsuke just put him in
an armbar as Emma pulled him away. I’m glad to see Nakamura back but I think it is time
to send Madcap Moss back to NXT. Not to learn how to wrestle he just needs to get away from
viewing eyes. If you can do it to Dijak you can do it to this guy and he badly needs it. ⅖
Scarlett is doing a tarot reading for Shinsuke Nakamura and then
Karrion Kross tells him to go check out his latest Tiktok. Poor Nak.
The Viking Raiders attacked Braun Strowman and Ricochet backstage and then we got our
main event between Solo Sikoa and Riddle. Paul Heyman lets us know that there will be
a rematch for the tag titles in two weeks at the WWE Draft and he guarantees Kevin
and Sami will lose the titles because Roman is losing patience with The Usos.
Riddle and Solo do a wrestle and Riddle starts going for sleeper holds and holding
on for dear life. The Usos got involved as they normally do and then Kevin and
Sami walked over to fight them and the referee ejected all of them, which is good,
but then just a couple of minutes later, they all just came back out and fought anyway,
which is bad. And the distraction of it all allowed Solo to hit the spike for the win and
then he slammed Riddle on the announce desk and turned the table over onto Riddle to end the show.
Yall I know this review hasn’t been a very happy go lucky review but this main event
just f***ing ruined me. What is the point of a referee ejecting people if they can just come
back out and affect the match with no f***ing consequences? It’s been happening for months! It
happened at WrestleMania and its happened again. The referees are inept, Adam Pearce is inept,
the whole damn system is inept! Also Riddle has already lost. This main event gets a ⅖
Overall this was not a top notch SmackDown gang. There wasn’t a single segment I could
recommend you go out of your way to see and the story between Kevin,
Sami and the Bloodline just isn’t strong enough to be opening and closing these shows right now
without significant storyline progression. We’re missing any sort of thread running
through the shows, tying them together and building interest throughout and as
it stands you get a real bland episode like this. This SmackDown gets a ⅖
And that just about wraps things up from me but before I go make sure you go watch
the Pipebomb challenge between Pete and Oli right now and check out this clip from the
latest episode of Cut Scene from fellow New World Oli good brother Luke Owen,
entitled Why Street Fighter The Movie Looks Nothing Like Street Fighter The Game!