Friday Night SmackDown Review - September 17, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

WWE Champion Big E and Finn Balor Interrupted The Bloodline; Big E and Balor def. SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos (Non-Title)

Before the bout, Reigns discussed his upcoming matches with Finn Balor at Extreme Rules and Brock Lesnar at Crown Jewel. I love how many enemies he has right now between them two, Big E and even Paul Heyman, who he's been teasing tension with since SummerSlam. Big E coming out to confront him before his tag team match with Balor against The Usos was a cool moment that hopefully planted the seeds for that as the Survivor Series main event. The matchup that followed was fun, and although I loathe when champions suffer non-title losses, I thought Big E and Balor getting one over on The Usos given their established issues with them was acceptable.

Rick Boogs def. Robert Roode

Is it just me or have we been seeing more of Boogs in the ring lately than Shinsuke Nakamura? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for him getting more experience and he's been impressive in these short-and-sweet squashes, but it shouldn't be coming at the expense of the Intercontinental Champion. Boogs vs. Roode was fine but only seemed to exist to set up the post-match angle with Apollo Crews and Commander Azeez attacking Nakamura and Boogs. Nakamura will defend the Intercontinental title against Crews next time despite Crews not winning a televised match since June.

Happy Corbin Attacked Kevin Owens

It looks like Owens will continue to feud with Corbin until he's inevitably drafted back to Raw in the upcoming Draft and then ideally AEW once his contract reportedly expires early next year. I assume they were supposed to go one-on-one here before Corbin ambushed him on the ramp. It was a simple angle that left the door open for the match to happen another day. It's possible we get it next week, but isn't Owens vs. Corbin more pay-per-view worthy than Liv Morgan vs. Carmella?

Seth Rollins Addressed Edge

This segment was advertised as Rollins explaining his actions from last week when he beat Edge and caused him to be stretchered out of the arena. Maybe I'm missing something, but what was so dastardly about what Rollins did to him? Sure, he hit him with a low blow when the referee wasn't looking, but he simply put him away in their match like he would any other opponent. In storyline, Edge was simply put in the ambulance because of his neck, but I don't think Rollins went out of his way to retire him. Nonetheless, this was the usual quality mic work from Rollins. Some fans may have rolled their eyes when he said that he wasn't done with Edge, but regardless of when Edge returns and they rekindle their rivalry, I'm okay with it because their last two matches were so great. Maybe we'll get a mixed tag team match also involving Becky Lynch and Beth Phoenix at WrestleMania 38 if they want to wait that long?

Toni Storm and Liv Morgan def. Carmella and Zelina Vega by Count-Out

This was the match we were supposed to get on SmackDown last week at Madison Square Garden before it was bumped. It wasn't anything I was overly anticipating, but it was a bummer that Vega couldn't compete in New York City on the eve of the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which her father was killed in. Nonetheless, this was fairly forgettable because it was so short. Carmella freaked out about getting punched in the nose and intentionally got counted out. That led to Morgan challenging her to a match at Extreme Rules out of the blue. I guess it's WWE's way of telling viewers that they also see the women on SmackDown who aren't in the title picture as a priority, but it feels forced to me. We've already seen Morgan vs. Carmella a bunch on TV this year. Unless there's some sort of a stipulation (and even then it's a stretch), why should we care?

Sami Zayn def. Dominik Mysterio

This is the third singles match these two have had in the last month and, once again, Zayn won. In other words, this was nothing new. It couldn't be any more apparent that Zayn is beyond directionless at the moment. Don't get me wrong, this was well wrestled while it lasted, but it didn't seem to actually accomplish anything. The endgame appears to still be that Dominik will turn on Rey and while I'm not confident that Dominik will make for a convincing heel, I'm mildly curious to see how it plays out.

Becky Lynch Crashed SmackDown Women's Champion Bianca Belair's Homecoming Celebration

As far as homecomings go, this was fairly basic stuff, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I figured Lynch would ruin it and leave Belair laying considering that's par for the course with WWE, but at least Belair wasn't completely humiliated. It was also cool that Kane served as the moderator of this thing since he's the mayor of Knoxville county. Belair got her moment (if only for a little bit) in the final segment of the show while WWE once again attempted to get heat on the heel Lynch, so this was a job well done.

Overall Show

Last week's SmackDown at Madison Square Garden was so stellar that it was going to be almost impossible to top. Sure enough, this show didn't even come close, but I thought it was a decent two hours on the whole. The show peaked with the opening segment, but the closing segment was what it needed to be. Everything in the middle was just sort of there, but the two hours never dragged and we got more developments for Extreme Rules as well as SmackDown next week.

SEE MORE: SmackDown Reviews