“SmackDown” set up a major match for the Crown Jewel event Oct. 11 in Perth, Australia. Tiffany Stratton retained her WWE Women’s Championship on Friday, keeping her undefeated year intact. “SmackDown” ended with the two women’s world champs, Stratton and Stephanie Vaquer, eyeing each other’s titles as they will meet for the WWE Women’s Crown Jewel Championship. But the story of Friday night was a save, a surprise and an incredible showing by one of the most talented wrestlers in the roster.
There were big plot points from “SmackDown.” Randy Orton saved Cody Rhodes from a Vision double-team beatdown, and Jacob Fatu confronted Drew McIntyre. But I will address those two points below because the biggest takeaway from this episode of “SmackDown,” by a Greensboro mile, was the fantastic showing of NXT’s Je’Von Evans, who faced Sami Zayn in the U.S. Title Open Challenge.
Evans is a star in the making, a future world champion who more than held his own against Zayn. If he’s been wrestling since 2018 and he’s 21 years old, imagine what he will look like at 25, at 30. Take a bow, Je’Von.
This is also the beauty of the U.S. Title Open Challenge. Zayn is the kind of wrestler who can have terrific matches with everyone on the WWE roster and carry this open challenge to a long and fruitful run, making his opponents look fantastic in the process — and ultimately winning via the increasingly destructive Blue Thunder Bomb. So far, Zayn’s U.S. Title Open Challenge has been an incredible success and it’s one of the best things about WWE right now.