Friday Night SmackDown featured a skeleton crew with many performers not appearing on the episode that was taped earlier in the day and reliant on a tribute for The Undertaker.
As of Friday night, WWE was scheduled to tape Monday’s episode of Raw on Saturday at the Performance Center. They are advertising two contract signings for the show with one involving Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler, and the other with Asuka and Sasha Banks ahead of Extreme Rules.
It is unknown when next week’s episode of SmackDown will be taped.
The Extreme Rules show, which included the tagline “The Horror Show”, will also feature a “Wyatt Swamp Fight” involving Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt in a non-title match. This appears to be the company’s next attempt at a cinematic-style match for the July 19th pay-per-view event.
They have also added a SmackDown women’s title match between Bayley and Nikki Cross to Extreme Rules. This was set-up by Cross pinning Lacey Evans in a four-way match that involved Alexa Bliss and Dana Brooke.
Names that were absent from SmackDown on Friday night included AJ Styles (who had been advertised to face Drew Gulak), Daniel Bryan, Bray Wyatt, Otis, Tucker, Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, Sheamus, Shorty G, Mojo Rawley, Naomi, and Tamina. It is not known what the specific reasons were for any of these performers being absent other than they were “unavailable” for Friday’s show.
There was one match taped for 205 Live between Isaiah “Swerve” Scott and Tony Nese that featured Byron Saxton and Drew Gulak on commentary.
The segment involving Sheamus giving “a toast” to Jeff Hardy was moved to next week’s episode.
