A host of matches were announced last week for this Tuesday night’s show, Alexa Bliss would have a rematch against Naomi after losing to her at No Mercy and Baron Corbin would again square off against Jack Swagger.
Most notably, however, after last week’s shock win, this week’s Smackdown Live was headlined by AJ Styles vs James Ellsworth for the WWE World Championship. Could James Ellsworth do the impossible and actually walk away with the gold? Surely not…
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#1 Ellsworth gets merchandise
This week’s show began backstage with James Ellsworth being shown his first ever piece of WWE merchandise by Dean Ambrose. That’s right, James Ellsworth now has a t-shirt on wweshop.com.
It’s a fairly basic t-shirt that just has Ellsworth’s chinless face on it but nonetheless is a sign of just how far this jobber has come in a short time.
#2 Kane reappears
During last week’s tag match between Bray Wyatt & Luke Harper and Kane & Randy Orton, Kane vanished thanks to some hocus pocus magic from the Wyatts and nobody had seen him since.
During this week’s match between Orton & Harper, Bray Wyatt was rolled to the ring in a casket by some of his followers in black sheep masks and Harper would proceed to attempt to force Orton into the casket.
Later in the match, when Bray would again open the casket, he would find Kane laying in it! Oooh, scary!
Kane would then help Orton take out The Wyatts before they would use their black magic again to disappear. It will be interesting to see whether this will lead to a future casket match in this feud or, perhaps, it was just a one-time thing.
#3 Not another ‘David Arquette’
In a backstage interview before his WWE World Title match, AJ Styles talked about how much of a travesty it would be if Ellsworth was to become champion.
He even went as far as to bring up the infamous David Arquette incident from WCW when the actor actually won the WCW World Title.
Surely WWE wouldn’t make the same mistake and have James Ellsworth win Smackdown’s most prestigious title, would they?
#4 Bliss beats Naomi
In a No Mercy rematch, Alexa Bliss would rectify her defeat to Naomi and pick up the win against the former Funkadactyl.
Some fans had speculated that Naomi may be added into the Smackdown Women’s Title match after her win at No Mercy and expanding her fanbase since her new ‘glow’ gimmick. However, this win for Alexa indicates that she will face Becky Lynch one-on-one for the gold when Smackdown goes to Glasgow, Scotland in a few weeks time.
#5 Hawkins debut delayed…again
Curt Hawkins was set to have his first televised match since his return when he stepped into the ring with Apollo Crews this week. But when Apollo hit Hawkins prior to the match starting after some trash talk, Hawkins would retreat to the back and refuse to fight.
Curt Hawkins’ gimmick of Eva Marie 2.0 is already growing tired in my opinion, we’ve already seen the voiceover entrance music and postponed matches from Eva a couple of months ago and this is just a blatant copy of that.
What do you guys think, are you enjoying the Curt Hawkins character? Comment below and let us know
#6 Does Bella need her fella?
Carmella continued to show further signs of improvement this week, during an in-ring promo on Nikki Bella where she questioned whether or not Nikki’s standing on the company was due to talent or due to who she is dating.
While this segment was just a thinly-veiled plug for the new Total Bellas show, it did have some good back and forth between Carmella & Nikki and helped further their feud.
#7 Emotional Ellsworth
Renee Young interviewed James Ellsworth prior to his dream Title match against AJ Styles and Ellsworth was clearly emotional when talking about the upcoming bout.
When Ellsworth talked about how he could one day tell his grandchildren that he fought for the WWE World Title, he was fighting back tears. It was a very real moment that reminded the fans just what a crazy journey this has been for Ellsworth who would have never dreamed that this could happen a few weeks back.
#8 Cat pictures & Whitney Houston
There was an odd backstage segment between Smackdown Live General Manager Daniel Bryan & Natalya.
They started off by talking about the upcoming Survivor Series PPV and the Women’s inter-promotional match that is scheduled to take place, but then quickly went on to Natalya quoting Whitney Houston lyrics and showing Bryan her cat’s Instagram page.
I really hope this isn’t the start of a gimmick change for Natalya, granted it won’t be as bad as her farting gimmick from a couple of years ago, but she was beginning to establish herself as the skilled ring veteran that she is and that persona suits her down to the ground.
#9 Corbin destroys Swagger
In a surprising yet pleasing turn of events on this week’s show, Baron Corbin dominated Jack Swagger in their match and won the bout convincingly. The back and forth feud between Swagger & Baron was doing neither man any favours and needed a clear winner for either man to come out of it with a sense of direction.
This sort of victory has been long overdue for Corbin and will hopefully lead to bigger and better things for the ‘Lone Wolf’.
#10 Ellsworth wins!!!
Ellsworth beats Styles! Ellsworth beats Styles! (In Jim Ross’ voice)
James Ellsworth picked up yet another win over AJ Styles in this week’s main event. But before you get too excited, it was by disqualification, therefore AJ Styles is still the WWE World Champion.
Dean Ambrose was once again involved and caused chaos at ringside by playing the role of ring announcer and bell ringer amongst others. The finish came when Ambrose was insulting Styles, causing him to snap and beat on Ellsworth in the corner until the ref was forced to stop the match.
That makes it James Ellsworth 2, AJ Styles 0. It also means that Ellsworth has more victories over Styles than John Cena does, let that one sink in.
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