WWE Friday Night SmackDown April 10th, 2026 Results & Recap: Jade Cargill Beats IYO SKY, Pat McAfee and Randy Orton Leave Cody Rhodes Laid Out

SmackDown last night was supposed to feel like the blue brand’s hard final push before WrestleMania 42, the penultimate stop before next Saturday and Sunday in Las Vegas. Instead, it was a show that constantly felt like it was fighting its own momentum. There was good wrestling on the episode. Bayley and Alexa Bliss put together a strong, technical match. Jacob Fatu and Tama Tonga had a decent sprint with some energy behind it. Royce Keys had a successful hometown debut. Jade Cargill and IYO SKY delivered a main event that mattered on paper. But the pacing was uneven, the commercials were overwhelming, and far too much of the show’s identity was wrapped around Pat McAfee, Jelly Roll, and celebrity clutter when there were actual wrestlers and actual WrestleMania stories that needed the time more.

Here are the full results.

• Alexa Bliss def. Bayley
• Royce Keys def. Berto
• Jacob Fatu def. Tama Tonga
• Trick Williams def. Matt Cardona
• Danhausen def. Kit Wilson
• Jade Cargill def. IYO SKY

Breakdowns & Reactions

The show opened in a way that immediately set the tone for the night. Cody Rhodes arrived looking for Pat McAfee. Jelly Roll was there too. Nick Aldis played traffic cop. Then Rhea Ripley came out to address Jade Cargill, only for IYO SKY to interrupt and demand Jade in the main event. None of that was inherently bad on its own. The issue was that SmackDown still took a long time to actually become a wrestling show. By the time Bayley and Alexa Bliss finally got going, the episode had already burned through a lot of television time and then immediately hit another break. That opening stretch felt bloated, and when the show later squeezed actual matches for time, it made the pacing look even worse.

Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss was one of the better things on the entire show. It was clean, technical, and felt like a match between two veterans who know exactly how to build a TV bout without wasting movement. Bayley got a nice hometown reaction, and the chemistry between them was obvious right away. Bliss bumped well, Bayley’s offense had some snap to it, and the match had a nice rhythm once it got past the interruptions. The problem was the finish. Charlotte Flair throwing the jacket, Bayley getting distracted, and Bliss winning with the roll-up was one of those endings that protects everyone while satisfying almost nobody. It was the kind of finish that WWE and wrestling in general keep leaning on far too often right now. Instead of a decisive win, a finisher, or a real statement, it was another distraction into a pin. That is the exact sort of finish fans are increasingly worn down by. The match itself was good. The ending dragged it down.

Royce Keys beating Berto should have been a straightforward star-making squash, and instead it landed somewhere between efficient and overextended. Keys looked the part. He had the hometown boost, the crowd was behind him, and the spinebuster finish gave him something definitive. That part worked. But the match still had more back-and-forth than it needed. When a guy like that debuts this close to WrestleMania, the job is simple: get in, flatten somebody, look like a killer, move on. WWE got the win part right and the structure part only half right.

The Cody Rhodes, Pat McAfee, Randy Orton, and Jelly Roll material was where the show really lost a lot of people. It just kept going and going and going. McAfee’s “massive surprise” being a ticket discount felt like a self-own, and the segment surrounding it only made things worse. Cody had some decent lines. The “Go home, Pat” line landed because the crowd was ready to say it with him. But the whole thing felt deeply self-indulgent. Then it turned into more talking, more mugging, more celebrity involvement, and finally an attack angle that still did not do much to make Cody vs. Orton feel hotter than it already should on name value alone. If anything, it made the feud feel less serious. This was one of those segments where WWE seemed convinced it was edgy and buzzy, when in reality it mostly came off as cringe, overlong, and bizarrely self-sabotaging.

That is also why the question of why it took so long to get to the first match matters. It is not just about timing. It is about priorities. SmackDown was eight days from WrestleMania and there were entire sections of the show devoted to things that are not the actual draw. When a show burns that much time on a Pat McAfee vanity piece and then asks the audience to accept compressed matches and break-heavy pacing everywhere else, the imbalance becomes impossible not to notice.

Jacob Fatu vs. Tama Tonga was fine for what it was. You could tell this existed in part to let Fatu wrestle in front of his Bay Area crowd, and in that sense it served its purpose. Tama got enough offense to look competitive, Fatu got the win he obviously needed, and the audience stayed with it. There were at least some signs in the match and the surrounding presentation that Tama is drifting away from MFT, or at minimum that WWE is leaving that door open. If they do go that route, Nakamura as a possible ally would make some sense based on the loose threads they have teased.

The real problem is still the Drew McIntyre feud. The prison-cell vignette was one of the weaker creative choices on the show. The constant references to Jacob’s prison time and family life are lazy. The post-match brawl last night was violent, sure, but it felt like violence in search of a story. Drew handcuffing Fatu, laying into him, and piling on after the match was meant to sell the Unsanctioned stipulation, but the feud still does not feel like it earned that label. Nothing about the build has had the emotional specificity or hatred that should define only the second Unsanctioned match in WrestleMania history. At this point the feud feels more like WWE trying to force intensity than telling a story that naturally became intense.

Sami Zayn’s promo with Trick Williams and Lil Yachty told you almost everything you need to know about where the audience is right now. Sami came out trying to play wounded hero and got mixed reactions again. Trick felt cooler. Trick felt fresher. Trick felt more naturally supported. That does not mean Sami cannot still have a good WrestleMania match, but it does mean the title switch and this whole road to WrestleMania have damaged the intended alignment. Fans wanted Trick vs. Carmelo Hayes for the United States title. That was the hotter direction. WWE instead pivoted into Sami taking the belt and now expects people to just accept him as the centerpiece. The crowd is not really doing that.

That said, Trick Williams vs. Matt Cardona went too long. Cardona getting offense is not the issue by itself, but when Trick is supposed to be walking into a WrestleMania title match, the balance there made him feel less dangerous than he should. Cardona looked like too much of a hurdle instead of a speed bump. The Helluva Kick to Lil Yachty was the best part of the entire sequence, and Yachty’s shirt was funnier than most of the segment around him. But the bigger problem remains the same: WWE has been building Trick and Sami for a while, yet the title feels like an accessory instead of the actual center of the rivalry. That is why the feud feels slightly off. Sami spent years talking about wanting the world title, failed again at the Royal Rumble challenge, and then almost immediately slid into a midcard title run. It is hard not to notice the contradiction there.

Danhausen beating Kit Wilson was comedy filler, and that is exactly what it played like. It was harmless enough, but again, this is part of a larger issue with the show. WWE keeps stuffing these episodes with novelty, branding, product placement, celebrity cameos, and wink-at-the-camera material, then wonders why the road to WrestleMania can feel scattered. The ESPN synergy, the ad reads, the product placement, the constant interruptions, the stop-start formatting, all of it is becoming exhausting. WWE has to stop doing matches where someone wrestles for two minutes and then disappears into a commercial. It kills momentum and it makes the actual in-ring feel less important than the packaging around it.

The main event angle around Jade Cargill, B-Fab, Michin, Rhea Ripley, and IYO SKY was the most telling thing on the whole show because it revealed exactly what WWE thinks matters most in this women’s story. Earlier in the night, Rhea addressed Jade for attacking IYO. IYO interrupted and insisted on facing Jade last night even though Rhea questioned whether she was in any condition to do it. Later, Rhea was shown taking out B-Fab and Michin backstage, which on paper was supposed to neutralize Jade’s backup and clear the deck for the main event. Then the match itself finally happened with barely any time left.

Move for move and beat for beat, the match was built around IYO fighting uphill and Jade surviving her. IYO came in selling the Raw attack and immediately tried to overwhelm Jade. She brought the speed, the urgency, and the sense that she was trying to get revenge before the damage in her body caught up to her. Jade weathered it, used her size, and once the fight shifted outside, she planted IYO with a nasty reverse Alabama Slam into the ring steps. That was the turning point. Back inside, Jade hit the pump kick, then Jaded, and that was that. After the bell, Jade grabbed a chair and looked ready to do more damage until Rhea hit the ring and ran her off.

The problem is that this did not feel like IYO getting a meaningful spotlight. It felt like IYO being used as connective tissue in the Jade-Rhea feud. She was the emotional trigger for Rhea, the injured babyface with guts, the one who took the loss so Jade could look strong before WrestleMania, and then the one who needed the save afterward. That is why the whole thing left such a weird taste. IYO had an incredible 2025. She should not be hovering on the edge of WrestleMania with no clear lane while other pieces get elevated around her. Invoking her in the Rhea-Jade story makes sense if the destination is bigger for IYO too. If it is not, then it just feels like WWE borrowing her credibility to strengthen a feud that was already set.

That is also why the frustration over Jade wrestling less than a week before WrestleMania makes sense. In a vacuum, top stars wrestle on TV all the time. In execution, though, this was another example of WWE making a big match and then not fully committing the time needed to make it feel special. If you are going to do Jade vs. IYO in a main event, give it room. Do not rush it, do not cram a commercial into it, and do not make it feel like an accessory to the post-match stare down.

As for how the reactions lined up, a lot of the response across the fanbase, live coverage, and journalists landed in similar places. Many people liked Bayley vs. Alexa. Many people were annoyed by the finish. Many people were tired of McAfee dominating the show. Many people picked up on Trick getting a stronger audience response than Sami. And many people came away from the main event feeling that IYO deserved better than being another stop on the road to Jade vs. Rhea. The loudest online reaction pockets were not universally negative on the whole show, but there was a lot of agreement on what did and did not work.

The current and updated WrestleMania 42 card

Saturday, April 18

• Cody Rhodes (c) vs. Randy Orton, Undisputed WWE Championship
• Stephanie Vaquer (c) vs. Liv Morgan, Women’s World Championship
• Seth Rollins vs. Gunther
• AJ Lee (c) vs. Becky Lynch, Women’s Intercontinental Championship
• Nia Jax & Lash Legend (c) vs. Charlotte Flair & Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley & Lyra Valkyria vs. The Bella Twins, WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship Fatal 4-Way

Matches airing on ESPN during the first hour on Saturday:

• Jacob Fatu vs. Drew McIntyre, Unsanctioned Match
• Logan Paul, Austin Theory & IShowSpeed vs. The Usos & LA Knight, Six-Man Tag

Sunday, April 19

• CM Punk (c) vs. Roman Reigns, World Heavyweight Championship
• Jade Cargill (c) vs. Rhea Ripley, WWE Women’s Championship
• “The Demon” Finn Bálor vs. Dominik Mysterio
• Sami Zayn (c) vs. Trick Williams, United States Championship

Matches airing on ESPN during the first hour on Sunday:

• Oba Femi vs. Brock Lesnar
• Penta (c) vs. Je’Von Evans vs. Dragon Lee vs. JD McDonagh vs. Rusev vs. Rey Mysterio, Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match

What was announced for next week’s episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown

• Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal
• Wyatt Sicks vs. MFT, 8-Man Street Fight

Final thoughts

SmackDown last night was not a total disaster, but it was absolutely a frustrating show. There was enough good wrestling there to make you wish WWE had simply trusted the wrestlers more and the celebrity clutter less. Bayley and Alexa delivered. Royce Keys made a good first impression even if the match should have been shorter. Jacob Fatu did what he needed to do. Trick and Sami at least got crowd energy, even if the booking around the title still feels backwards. And the women’s main event had purpose, even if it shortchanged IYO in the process.

But the show kept getting in its own way. Too much talking before the first bell. Too many commercials. Too much product placement. Too much Pat McAfee. Too much celebrity oxygen being sucked out of a WrestleMania build that should be sharper than this eight days out. SmackDown last night had flashes of what it should be. It just spent too much of its time being everything else.

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