Dean Ambrose and AJ Styles will battle for the WWE World Championship tonight on SmackDown. (WWE.com)
Tonight on SmackDown Live, Dean Ambrose gets his rematch against AJ Styles for the WWE World Championship. Could we have a new champion after tonight’s main event? Plus, we’ll see the repercussions of The Miz retaining his Intercontinental Title by cheating (again), in addition to the continuation of the Becky Lynch vs. Alexa Bliss feud. The show will be broadcast live tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the USA Network. Read on for match results and spoilers, followed by a preview of the night’s events written earlier today.
8:00 – Randy Orton enters. He calls out Bray Wyatt, saying he thinks mind games will cause Orton to lose his focus. But Wyatt does these things, Orton says, because he’s afraid. If Wyatt is man enough, he’ll come down to the ring right now to face his fears.
Wyatt comes on screen, telling the story of Hansel and Gretel that doesn’t really connect to anything. He again says he’s a god, and therefore Wyatt is in no position to make demands. Wyatt is holding an hourglass during this monologue.
8:08 – Backstage, Dean Ambrose says that AJ Styles has been bragging about beating John Cena, but he beat John Cena last week too. Tonight, he’s going to break Styles’ face, smash his ego, and take back his championship.
8:14 – The Usos and The Ascension defeat American Alpha & Heath Slater and Rhyno by submission. Not long into the match, Chad Gable’s knee is injured yet again. Gable is able to tag in Heath Slater, but the Usos proceed to injure Slater’s knee as well, forcing him to tap out.
8:27 – Backstage, John Cena says that AJ Styles is at the top of his game right now, and while he doesn’t care for Dean Ambrose, Cena has to admit that he has guts, unlike Styles. Still, he’ll be the one walking out of No Mercy as the 16 time champion.
8:28 – The Miz replaces a poster of LeBron James with a poster of himself.
8:29 – In the locker room, Randy Orton encounters some sort of weird arrow made of sticks that is pointing to the right. Orton moves the arrow to point left and then leaves on that side of the room. When the camera pans back, the arrow is pointing right again, and Erik Rowan is standing there in his mask.
8:34 – Bray Wyatt says Randy Orton was never really good at taking direction and he laughs maniacally. The sand in Wyatt’s hourglass has gone down quite a bit since earlier.
8:35 – Carmella and Natalya defeat Naomi and Nikki Bella. Towards the end of the match, Nikki Bella is able to take out some aggression on Carmella, but Carmella ultimately takes her out.
8:49 – In the locker room, Randy Orton comes upon a door that says “I am a god” and another that says “predator or prey.” “One way out, choose wisely” is also written on the wall. Orton opens the first door, only to find a cardboard standup of himself with the word “prey” written on it in red. He opens the other door, and Erik Rowan is lingering behind it. Orton, apparently without having seen Rowan, leaves.
8:56 – The Miz enters for his homecoming celebration. The ring is full of posters of The Miz, who holds up his title as the pyrotechnics go off for a ridiculously long time. After Maryse introduces him, a retrospective of his career is played. Afterwards he declares, “Cleveland, I’m home.”
He immediately scolds the crowd for not giving him a warm enough welcome, saying he’s the only hero in Cleveland. He points out his parents in the crowd, and then points out the parents of Dolph Ziggler, telling them they created a complete loser.
Dolph Ziggler enters, furious at The Miz for speaking ill of his parents and his city. Ziggler says The Miz has cheated over and over, and so his title is tainted. In the record books, Miz says, it won’t say that he cheated, but it will say that Ziggler continued to lose. Ziggler should be embarrassed of his career, Miz says, because he has done nothing with it.
The Miz begins to exit, insulting Ziggler’s parents on the way out. Ziggler stops him, saying that the WWE is what he loves, but things that love you don’t always love you back. Everyone always asks him why he still does it, and it’s because he can’t stop. He thought he would be a bigger star, but he just can’t stop himself. “Put up that title one more time, and I’ll put up my entire career,” Ziggler says.
The Miz immediately comes back in the ring. Ziggler again says that he wants one more match, and if he doesn’t win, he’ll leave the WWE. That match will take place at No Mercy.
9:15 – Bray Wyatt talks about watching Randy Orton like a rat in a maze and laughs some more.
9:17 – Becky Lynch enters but is immediately attacked from behind by Alexa Bliss. She grabs the title and yells, “You don’t deserve this Becky! I do!” Bliss leaves as Becky Lynch lies on the floor, injured.
9:22 – Wyatt says he’s disappointed, as he thought Randy Orton was worthy of being in his presence but the viper has no fangs. Suddenly, Orton appears behind Bray Wyatt (in the mysterious dark room Wyatt is always speaking from), wearing Erik Rowan’s mask. He takes it off and immediately begins beating up Wyatt. Orton sits down in Wyatt’s chair and puts on the sheep mask. He begins singing, but the video slows down and reverses itself weirdly, and then the feed cuts back to Bray Wyatt sitting in the chair like nothing happened.
9:26 – Backstage, AJ Styles again declares himself the face that runs the place, saying that tonight he will defend his title.
9:33 – AJ Styles defeats Dean Ambrose, retaining the WWE World Championship. Ambrose gets started on Styles right away, clearly furious at him and expressing a lot of pent-up rage. Ambrose has the upper hand for the first half of the match, at one point landing two suicide dives in a row. Not long after, though, Styles attacks Ambrose’s left leg, giving him a bit of an advantage. At one point in the match, AJ Styles goes after John Cena, who is sitting in on commentary. John Cena goes to get in on the action, and because the referee is distracted, he doesn’t notice Ambrose pinning Styles. Cena’s distraction, then, costs Dean Ambrose the championship. Ambrose and Cena argue in the ring until Cena assaults Ambrose and then Styles. The show ends with Cena holding up AJ Styles’ World Championship belt.
Viewers will recall that at the conclusion of last week’s SmackDown, Daniel Bryan decided that Dean Ambrose would get his World Championship rematch on September 27th’s show. Ambrose assaulted Styles at the end of the night last week, and he followed that up with an excellent promo on Talking Smack, during which he criticized Styles for hitting him in the groin to win the title. Can Ambrose get his revenge?
Plus, last week on SmackDown, The Miz had to battle Dolph Ziggler for the Intercontinental Championship. Ziggler was oh so close to defeating The Miz, but he ended up being defeated when The Miz pulled out some hairspray. Will there be any consequences for The Miz, or can he continue to cheat his way to the top? And where does Ziggler go from here after losing his millionth title match?
In the women’s division, Becky Lynch and Alexa Bliss had their No Mercy contract signing last week, with Bliss flipping the table and assaulting Lynch. Will the two go at it again before their title match on October 9th? Carmella will also presumably continue to beat up Nikki Bella for a reason that is still completely unclear.
Finally, the feud between The Usos and Heath Slater & Rhyno will presumably get going, and hopefully Bray Wyatt will actually appear in the same room as Randy Orton for once. It all goes down tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on the USA Network.
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