Friday Night SmackDown made its first stop on this year’s Road to WrestleMania from inside the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Coming out of the Royal Rumble, this year’s winner is none other than Liv Morgan, who is set to make her presence felt tonight.
As for the women of Team Blue, they are now looking ahead to the Elimination Chamber match, with a triple threat qualifying match to determine the blue brand’s three featured competitors. One of the women in that match will be the returning Tiffany Stratton, who re-emerged as #30 in the Royal Rumble and had not been seen since losing the WWE Women’s Championship back in November. Elsewhere, Kiana James and the Women’s United States Champion Giulia have a shot at the Women’s Tag Team Championships when they take on Monday Night Raw’s reigning champions, Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY.
Now onto the show, our first glimpse of the women featured Cathy Kelley standing backstage with Giulia and Kiana James. When asked what a tag team title reign would set in motion for the two, James says that the titles are just a stepping stone to Giulia becoming a triple champion. James also translates Giulia’s Japanese words, stating that the Royal Rumble was just a blip, but Giulia is exactly where she is projected. Tonight, they will win the tag team titles, Giulia will go on to win Elimination Chamber, and face one of the two women’s champions at WrestleMania.
The tag team title match was the show’s first match of the night, and things began with Rhea and Kiana locking up, but James quickly backed away when Ripley aimed a right hand at her and tagged in Giulia; The Beautiful Madness made it known that she wanted IYO. The two fought briefly in a back-and-forth manner before James was tagged in again, with the heels gaining control of the match overall.
The tables would turn in RhIYO’s favor, as Giulia missed a running knee into the turnbuckles when SKY ducked out of the way. SKY also threw James out of the ring, but the wrestling businesswoman ran back in only for Ripley to finally get the tag she had desperately been waiting for. Rhea unleased a rapid flurry of offense on James, but the heel team still tried their best to claim victory. Ultimately, a headbutt from Ripley to Giulia helped SKY get in position for a moonsault, which helped them win the match and retain their titles; the two gave each other a hug afterwards.
In the women’s locker room, Cathy Kelley stood by with Tiffany Stratton, and asked her on how she plans to refocus and get her eyes back on the target of reclaiming the Women’s Championship. The Buff Barbie says that she had a WrestleMania match her first year being on SmackDown, and says that those who think she’ll let one bad night ruin her chances at having another WrestleMania moment are wrong. Tonight, she reminds everyone why SmackDown runs on Tiffy Time.
Stratton is interrupted by the voice of Alba Fyre, who walks into the locker room with Chelsea Green. Green tells “Tacky Time” that nobody cares that she’s back. The only headline should be “CHELSEA: ROBBED OF HER WRESTLEMANIA MOMENT AFTER ROYAL RUMBLE ELIMINATION”, with the two handing her a single piece of rolled-up paper with the supposed headline and passing it off as a newspaper. Green says the only person in this company that is news-worthy is her. Stratton responds by telling Green that she should forget the headline and instead focus on the obituary, because that is where her name is going to be when she beats her tonight and her WrestleMania dreams are dead.
The resulting triple threat match between Stratton, Green, and Lash Legend began with the former Women’s United States Champion slapping both Stratton and Legend. Nia Jax, who accompanied Legend for the match, was taken out twice, once from Tiffany via a suicide dive that hit them both, and another from Chelsea, who hit Jax and Stratton with a flying crossbody to the floor right next to the commentary desk.
After a commercial break, the show returned with Lash using her imposing figure to her advantage, choking out both Green and giving Stratton a gorilla press slam on top of Green. Other notable spots included Green trying to hit the Un-pretty-her on Stratton, but The Center of the Universe fought her way out of it by getting up to the turnbuckles and hitting a superplex, which nearly got her the win before Legend broke up the pin at 2.
Nearing the end of the match, Green took a note from Shane McMahon and hit his Coast-to-Coast finisher on Stratton and Legend. She attempted to pin The Boujee Bully, only for The Irresistible Force to pull her leg out of the ring in time. Jax soon pushed Fyre out of her way, but got slapped for her troubles. Green and Stratton ultimately worked together to superkick Jax, but once they got back in the ring, it was Stratton who reversed the Un-pretty-her and got up to the turnbuckles to hit a moonsault on her and win the match.
This makes Tiffany the first of three women from SmackDown who will be competing in this year’s women’s Elimination Chamber match. As we found out later on, the second woman will be determined by another triple threat qualifying match next week between Alexa Bliss, Giulia, and Zelina.
Speaking of Zelina, the wife of Aleister Black briefly showed up to give Randy Orton a brief look backstage; Black, Orton, and Solo Sikoa were set to face each other in the night’s main event, a triple threat qualifying match for the men’s Elimination Chamber.
A brief “Did You Know?” factoid appeared after a commercial break, mentioning that Lash Legend scored the most eliminations in this year’s Royal Rumble with 5, eliminating fellow SmackDown stars Charlotte Flair and Jordynne Grace, IYO SKY and Nikki Bella from Raw, and Nikki’s sister, WWE Hall of Famer Brie Bella. This factoid was then followed by a video package recapping the match, in particular highlighting the presence of NXT’s Lola Vice, Jacy Jayne, Kelani Jordan, and Sol Ruca.
More backstage segments continued to take place as Candice LeRae confronted the quartet of Fraxiom (Nathan Frazer and Axiom) and The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin). The Poison Pixie singled out Frazer and Axiom for their role in causing Johnny Gargano to suffer from what appears to be a deep depressive state, lying face down on a box. When Sabin tells her that he’s not looking at Johnny but rather “a pile of dirty laundry”, The Poison Pixie says that her husband has been feeling this way all week, and remarks to Fraxiom that the two don’t know what Axiom’s blue mask meant to him, but Frazer and Axiom mock her instead and soon trail off.
LeRae tries talking to Sabin and Shelley, wanting them to talk to Gargano as they’ve all known each other for a long time, and Sabin tells her she’s right, but reminds her that Gargano (and Tommaso Ciampa) deceived him and Shelley and cost them the WWE Tag Team Championships following their WWE debut in 2024; he too walks off and tells her she’s out of her mind. A last-ditch effort to get Alex Shelley to talk to him also fails. LeRae tries to comfort her husband and tells her they can’t stay like this, with Gargano still lying face down to end the segment.
Cathy Kelley is back and this time is interviewing Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY, who are in great spirits as Kelley congratulates them on yet another successful title defense and asked them to talk about how they felt the match went and what it was like to face Giulia and Kiana James. SKY says that Giulia and Kiana put on a good match, but the tag team titles are still theirs.
Ripley says they are on the way to WrestleMania and everyone’s supposed to be on their A-game, but so are they, and they’re not planning on letting go of the titles anytime soon, adding that she is planning on taking tonight’s momentum to this Monday’s Raw and qualifying for the women’s Elimination Chamber, as they’d both like to add a little bit more gold.
Nia Jax and Lash Legend arrive, with Jax telling Ripley that a spot in the Elimination Chamber would be wasted on her; it should have gone to Lash, but in Jax’s words, she was screwed over tonight. Ripley responds by saying that for as big and bad as the two of them are, they sure use some excuses like a bunch of whiny little somethings, which pisses Legend off. Jax says they weren’t in the ring with Ripley and SKY tonight because they would have walked out the tag team champions.
SKY questions if Jax’s words are a challenge, but Legend says her words are a threat. As Jax holds her back, she says that Ripley and SKY have been ducking them long enough that it’s time they speak to Nick Aldis about it. With the interview done, Kelley leaves the champions behind, but Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez take a look at them and make their way out to the ring.
Right before the final hour of the show, general manager Nick Aldis stood in the ring to introduce this year’s Royal Rumble winner, Liv Morgan, who came out alongside Raquel Rodriguez. Skipping around the ring and with a microphone in hand, Morgan tells the fans that they are now in the presence of the “greatest Royal Rumble winner of all time”, really drawing out the “all” part. However, Morgan isn’t just the greatest Royal Rumble winner of all time, she is the hottest, smartest, funniest, the most charismatic, the most talented, and the most iconic woman in the history of WWE.
All of that comes with a lot of power, and with great power comes great responsibility; she has a very big decision to make and not that much time to make it, so she could choose to face Stephanie Vaquer for the Women’s World Championship or face Jade Cargill for the WWE Women’s Championship, but she’s been thinking long and hard about it, but she’s gotta be honest with the fans: WrestleMania is not the only thing that’s been on her mind, and there is a huge elephant in the room that she’d like to address.
Morgan seems like she is about to address that elephant, but Rodriguez takes the mic and says that she wants to do it. Before they can say anything, Jade Cargill’s music interrupts and the Women’s Champion makes her way out.
Cargill takes the mic and says she doesn’t care that Morgan won the Rumble, and she damn sure doesn’t care that she’s here tonight on SmackDown. She makes herself crystal clear: if Liv chooses her, she’s going to beat that ass at WrestleMania. She then turns her attention to Raquel, asking her what she’s looking at. Liv laughs and says that Jade is funny, adding that if she were her, she would watch what she says because she can easily choose to face Stephanie and let Raquel take Jade’s title at WrestleMania, with them both leaving The Grandest Stage of Them All as champions.
Jordynne Grace enters the stage and wants to start talking by congratulating Liv; she won the Rumble and did what she had to do to earn a title shot at WrestleMania. But if she could get Jade to defend the title, then it might be her Liv faces in Vegas. Morgan blows her off, calling her “Jordy” and saying that she knows Grace is new here, but she doesn’t know who Grace thinks she is interrupting her. The four women begin to argue and Aldis once again mentions that he is always happy to welcome her to SmackDown, but it’s like what they talked about last week: if she’s available to talk, she’s available to fight. A tag team match pitting Liv and Raquel against Jade and Jordynne is booked to happen right now.
The impromptu match began with all four women attacking each other before commercials. After the show returned, it was Rodriguez who was in control over Grace. Tagging in Morgan, the New Jersey native tried to hit her boyfriend Dominik Mysterio’s Three Amigos move, but Grace was able to reverse it and sent her into the turnbuckles, following it up with a series of clotheslines and a bodyslam. As Cargill continued to yawn and mock Grace while on the ring apron, Rodriguez broke up a pin attempt inside the ring. Cargill inadvertently kicked Grace, but ducked a big boot from Raquel, who also accidentally kicked Morgan in the face. Cargill and Rodriguez then had a staredown, only for Grace to enter the ring, push Cargill out and roll up Rodriguez for a fast victory. Friction was obvious between both teams of women afterwards.
Backstage, Jordynne and Jade argued and got in each other’s faces before Nick Aldis told Cargill not to lock in her WrestleMania plans just yet because next week on SmackDown, she’ll be defending the WWE Women’s Championship against Jordynne. Cargill says “bet”, while Grace tells her she will see her next week.
Friday Night SmackDown will air next week from inside the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas; for viewers in the United States, the show will be airing at its normal time on Syfy for the next two weeks due to Winter Olympics coverage that will be airing on USA Network, so make sure your cable or streaming package has access to the channel.
As for matches, here’s what we can expect:
- Women’s Championship: Jade Cargill (c) vs. Jordynne Grace
- Women’s Tag Team Championship: RhIYO (Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY) (c) vs. Nia Jax and Lash Legend
- Triple Threat Women’s Elimination Chamber Qualifying Match: Alexa Bliss vs. Giulia vs. Zelina
As always, make sure to share to share your thoughts on this week’s episode of SmackDown in the comments below.