Friday Night SmackDown Review - November 1, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

WWE Women's Champion Nia Jax and Women's World Champion Liv Morgan Went Face-to-Face; Morgan def. Tiffany Stratton (Non-Title)

I've made it quite clear over the last few weeks, but I truly do not care about the Crown Jewel championships for the men or the women. Thus, Jax and Morgan facing off didn't do much for me with both of them being heels, but I did like the tease for Stratton potentially cashing in her Money in the Bank briefcase at Crown Jewel on either champion. The subsequent match between Morgan and Stratton was total throwaway because it was so short, but I suppose it gave Morgan a win.

The Street Profits def. Pretty Deadly

Pretty Deadly interrupted the Profits on last week's SmackDown LowDown and that was how this match came about. That's it. I can totally understand why Montez Ford would be frustrated right now, as he alluded to in an interview this week. This was fine for what it was and it gave the Profits a win, but where do they go from here? They've already failed to regain tag team gold this year several times. Needless to say, Ford is long overdue for a singles push.

Naomi and Bayley def. Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell

In a heartbreaking turn of events, Fightful revealed a few hours before SmackDown on social media that Hartwell was one of three talents that are being released, so this will likely go down as her final WWE match. What's wild is that she didn't even take the pin for her team here. As a longtime fan of hers, that's a disappointing departure, and a puzzling one because she only recently returned to television. The match itself was solid and gave Naomi an additional momentum boost ahead of her eventual opportunity at the WWE Women's Championship.

Roman Reigns and Jey Uso Buried the Hatchet

This is the segment I was looking forward to the most when it came to the original Bloodline reuniting ahead of WarGames. Jey was great in his role explaining to Reigns why he needs to see him as an equal in order for this reunion to work, but I really wish we had gotten more from Reigns than just "Yeet." Could the dude at least apologize for manipulating and abusing Jey for so many years? Everything about this angle has been rushed, but the crowds have certainly been eating it up.

IYO SKY def. Lash Legend, Piper Niven and WWE Women's Tag Team Champion Bianca Belair in a Fatal 4-Way Match

I'm more excited for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship Fatal 4-Way at Crown Jewel than any other women's tag title match we've gotten on pay-per-view in some time. The build has played out across all three brands and we've gotten some fun matches out of it, including this one where everyone had a chance to shine. I'm happy this received as much time as it did.

Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton def. Imperium

After all of the entrances, video packages and commercials, these four weren't left with a whole lot of time, but what we got was good. Granted, it was predictable that Ludwig Kaiser was eating the pinfall loss, but I enjoyed this for as long as it lasted. The ending was excellent with Kevin Owens attacking Orton while Gunther choked out Rhodes. That was effective final hype for both of those Crown Jewel matches.

Overall Show

It was painfully apparent that this was a taped show based on how quiet the crowd was for a majority of it, though they did come alive for the segment with Reigns and The Usos. This was far from the most exciting edition of SmackDown in recent weeks, but it was perfectly passable. More importantly, the hype for Crown Jewel was well done and there was much more of it than there was on Monday's Raw.

SEE MORE: SmackDown Reviews