The straight up results from this week’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania:
WWE Champion Cody Rhodes is good and fed up with Drew McIntyre, enough so that he asked SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis to lift his suspension so they can settle their differences once and for all. Aldis tried, but he couldn’t because, well, McIntyre is on the verge of getting litigious over the entire situation.
Which is when you know they’ve hit a wall creatively. There isn’t much worse than a wrestler, especially a tough guy like DM Hunk, going the legal route.
Thankfully, all this gave way, at least for this show, to NXT Champion Oba Femi making his presence felt. After all, while McIntyre may be an itch Rhodes must scratch, there’s a far larger, more immediate problem — he’s got a date with Femi at Saturday Night’s Main Event.
For his part, the NXT champ told Cody outright that he’s worried about the wrong guy. Who gives a shit about Drew right now? Femi is knocking on Rhodes’ front door, not because the future is coming but because it is here right now.
“Your time is up, and my time is now.”
Rhodes rightfully responded simply by reminding Oba he’s the guy who beat Cena to win the WWE championship. They ended things with a simple staredown while holding up their respective titles. That part was a bit laughable, considering who is holding what and everything they had to do to get it, but we learned something major here that we wouldn’t have if they didn’t do this.
Femi looked and sounded every bit like he belonged in the same ring as one of the top stars in all of professional wrestling right now.
They did a good job with the NXT guys working tomorrow’s show, and advanced storylines elsewhere. A solid enough effort.