WWE Friday Night SmackDown finally feels like a show beginning to rediscover its creative identity, but last night also exposed the biggest problem standing between the blue brand and becoming consistently great again: WWE suddenly has more worthwhile stories than it has television time to properly tell them. From CM Punk and Kevin Owens finally … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown August 21, 2026 arrives in Toronto with an Undisputed WWE Championship match carrying considerably more baggage than the usual television title defense. Tonight, CM Punk puts the championship on the line against Kevin Owens after their two-decade history finally spilled into the open last week, while Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown finally feels like it has some teeth again. Tonight wasn’t perfect, and there are still a few frustrating booking habits WWE refuses to let die, but the difference between the blue brand before SummerSlam and what we have watched over the last two Fridays is hard to ignore. Stories are moving. … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown rolls into Boston tonight with three championships on the line, but the biggest questions extend well beyond the advertised matches. CM Punk and Kevin Owens are one confrontation away from turning an already hostile Undisputed WWE Championship rivalry into a fight one week before Toronto, Cody Rhodes is still hunting Randy … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown delivered its final stop on the road to SummerSlam last night from the Resch Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with CM Punk and Cody Rhodes finally abandoning the uneasy respect that had defined their Undisputed WWE Championship rivalry. The two SummerSlam opponents closed the show by fighting around ringside as referees … Read more
WWE Friday Night SmackDown takes over the Resch Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, tonight for the final stop before SummerSlam invades U.S. Bank Stadium for a two-night Premium Live Event this weekend. Undisputed WWE Champion CM Punk and Cody Rhodes will meet face-to-face one final time before their championship match Saturday night. WWE Tag Team … Read more
We are less than a week away from WWE Night of Champions on Saturday, June 27th, 2026, and last night’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown finally gave the premium live event the championship weight it needed. This was not a perfect show, and at times WWE got in its own way by adding extra layers to … Read more
Tonight’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown feels less like a normal weekly stop on the road to Night of Champions and more like a loaded checkpoint where several major directions can either lock into place or completely fall apart. Cody Rhodes defending the Undisputed WWE Championship against Gunther would already be big enough on its own, … Read more
Last night’s WWE Friday Night SmackDown was a busy, important and uneven stop on the road to Backlash — the kind of episode where WWE moved a lot of pieces forward, but also exposed some of the same creative habits that keep holding the product back. Cody Rhodes returned to the ring, Ricky Saints made … Read more
The SmackDown After Mania should have felt like a reset. Instead, it felt like a company trying to convince itself it had momentum while terrible WWE release news hung over the entire night. As mentioned in my LNC Wrestling article on the WWE releases, that news broke right before SmackDown went on the air last … Read more
