WWE Friday Night SmackDown Review And Results (6/26): Undertaker Tribute Show, #1 Contender For Women’s Championship Revealed, And More

Friday Night SmackDown

This episode of Friday Night SmackDown took place once again at the Performance Center in Orlando Florida. This show originally had AJ Styles go up against Drew Gulak and Sheamus proposing a toast to Jeff Hardy but the show ended up mostly highlighting the career of The Undertaker as they showed clips of many WWE legends reflecting on their experiences with him and a full showing of the Boneyard Match from WrestleMania 36.

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The show opened with an tribute to The Undertaker and the whole roster chanting “Thank You Taker” afterwards.

They show the Boneyard Match from WrestleMania 36 between AJ Styles and The Undertaker in it’s entirety.

King Corbin was in the ring, calling Undertaker an old bag of bones. He said that Undertaker was the founding member of the Kiss My Ass club. He claimed Taker has been stealing money and held younger Superstars down like him. He doesn’t thank him and says that he sucks. Jeff Hardy went in the ring, attacking Corbin. He knocks Corbin out of the ring.

Jeff Hardy is interviewed about The Undertaker being the benchmark of the WWE and he will stand up for Taker when he goes up against Corbin.

Nikki Cross Defeated Alexa Bliss, Dana Brooke and Lacey Evans To Become #1 Contender For The SmackDown Women’s Championship

Review: The match itself was just okay. I’m glad that Nikki Cross got the win, it’s a different opponent for Bayley and the rivalry should be entertaining. Also, Bayley and Sasha really killed it on commentary.

Lucha House Party and The New Day Defeated Miz, John Morrison, Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura

Review: Another okay match. This just felt like a filler match and didn’t really provide much importance to the tag titles.

Corbin is interviewed about Taker being a mentor to Jeff Hardy and he said that it’s got him in and out of jail. He said Jeff should join Taker in retirement.

Braun Strowman came out to the ring, talking about how Bray has caused fear in him in the past by telling a story of how Bray was bitten by a snake. He said he knew Bray was the devil himself. He said part of him still loves doing Bray’s dirty work. He asked Bray if they can go back to the swamp. He asked Bray if he wanted to go back to the place of his creation one more time. Braun started laughing as Bray’s laugh was being heard as well.

Jeff Hardy Defeated King Corbin

Review: Just an average match, nothing really exciting to close out the show but it was good for what this show as mainly about.

Corbin attacked Hardy after the match. The New Day came into the ring to help Hardy. Big E planted him with the Big Ending, Strowman slammed him with the Power Slam and Matt Riddle dived off the top rope landing on Corbin. The show ended with everyone celebrating in the ring and showing their respect to The Undertaker.

Overall Review: I was really surprised of how they devoted this entire show to The Undertaker after he announced in his documentary that he had no desire to get back in the ring. Don’t get me wrong, The Undertaker is probably the greatest WWE Superstar of all time and deserves a great sendoff. However, this felt more like a tribute show to someone who had passed away more than someone that retired. That’s just my honest opinion about it. They took a lot of the advertised matches and segments like Hardy and Sheamus’ segment and AJ’s match with Gulak to do this all for Taker.

To give it a grade, I would give it a 5/10.

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