SmackDown Live hailed from Miami last night and put on a pretty exciting episode to the WWE Universe. Three huge matches have been confirmed for SummerSlam in two weeks time, bringing together some of the hottest feuds and characters for an outing at the second biggest show of the year. SmackDown Live has revolved around two superstars as of late – Kofi Kingston and Kevin Owens – Kingston being the valiant champion, whilst Owens has been challenging the authority of SmackDown Live in Shane McMahon. All stories, and then some, came together quite nicely last night.
Kofi Kingston challenged ‘The Viper’ Randy Orton to a WWE title match, culminating a decade-long rivalry that fans have been begging to see a conclusion to for years. If Kofi winning the title had to lead to anything, it needed to be this revisit of their 2009/2010 feuds. Orton has been very subtly calling back to the infamous in-ring events in which he visibly lost his cool with a greener Kofi. This is the make or break match for Kingston, it’s time to see just how much faith WWE have in the champ to take the show forward as they enter their new deal with Fox.
Meanwhile, Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon made their match official for SummerSlam, but with an added twist. Should Owens lose to ‘The Best in the World’, then he’ll leave WWE. A pretty standard babyface stipulation if you ask me, yet it doesn’t give too much away. Knowing WWE and their track record with anti-heroes, perhaps we’ll be seeing Owens go against his own ruling and show up on SmackDown Live anyway after taking the loss. It’ll certainly make him one of the hottest things in all of WWE, with fans clamoring to see Owens break the rules of his loss and exact revenge on Shane. Definitely getting Austin vibes here.
Finally, WWE confirmed a match between ‘The Fiend’ Bray Wyatt and Finn Balor. Balor challenged the returnee on SmackDown, after his heinous attack on Mick Foley at Raw Reunion. Even if we have seen this match at SummerSlam once before, it’ll be nice to see them go at it again with a lot more momentum behind them. Everyone is wanting to see what Wyatt can do in the ring under this new guise, so it should make for a really fun match.
So this leaves the SummerSlam card pretty stacked, with the following matches now set for August 11th:
Brock Lesnar vs Seth Rollins – WWE Universal Championship
Kofi Kingston vs Randy Orton – WWE Championship
Becky Lynch vs Natalya – WWE Raw Women’s Championship
Bayley vs Ember Moon – WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship
Finn Balor vs Bray Wyatt
Kevin Owens vs Shane McMahon
What else would you like to see added to the SummerSlam card? Let us know in the comments below.
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