This week’s SmackDown started as The Judgment Day came out to the arena for the first match of the night. It was Finn Balor and Damian Priest who represented Judgment Day in this match to take on the team of Rey Mysterio and Santos Escobar.
Match 1 – The Judgment Day defeated LWO
WWE SmackDown 21.04.2023 Results & Ratings Part 1
As mentioned above, the team of Finn Balor and Damian Priest took on the team of Rey Mysterio and Santos Escobar who represented the LWO. It was a good match to kick things off for the night. Both teams did really well. And surprisingly there was no outside interference during this match.
At the end of the match, Priest pinned Escobar with the South of Heaven Chokeslam. Escobar failed to understand who the legal man was and he had to pay for it. After the match, Priest addressed his old friend Bad Bunny who would be appearing next week on RAW and he wish that no such thing would happen like the last time they met each other.
Footage from last week’s SmackDown was shown where Matt Riddle went one on one with the enforce of the Bloodline Solo Sikoa where Solo received a very dominant victory and after the match, Solo beat Riddle down and buried him under the announce table.
Backstage Zelina Vega met Adam Pearce where she expressed her desire to face Rhea Ripley for the Smackdown Women’s Championship at the upcoming Backlash pay per view event. She said that she had been underestimated throughout her career because of her height. Now she wanted to prove something by beating Rhea Ripley. Adam Pearce said that he would have to talk to the upper management and Rhea to make it official.
Footage from last week’s Smackdown was shown where The King of Strong Style Shinsuke Nakamura made his grand return and got instantly challenged by the former two times NXT champion Karrion Kross. They promoted this upcoming feud as well.
Match 2 – Braun Strowman and Ricochet defeated The Viking Raiders
This might be the end of this short going tag team feud. Last week on Friday Night Smackdown Braun Strowman and Ricochet got attacked by the Viking Raiders backstage and beaten down pretty badly. A match between the two teams was announced instantly for this week’s SmackDown.
About the match, it was booked for seven and a half minutes and it was a good and competitive match. But ultimately it was pretty much predictable that the babyface side was going to take the win. Ricochet pinned Ivar to pick up the victory for his side. Honestly we believe the Vikings needed to win this match.
This is what WWE is doing terribly with their Tag Team division. Clearly Strowman and Ricochet have no future as a tag team. Soon their team will break and they will continue doing solo runs. But Viking Raiders is a consistent Tag Team that needed to be built strongly.
Match 3 – WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship – Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan defeated Chelsea Green and Sonya Deville to retain
This match was booked for six minutes only and it was another predictable match. Surely, Sonya and Chelsea were not going to win the Tag Team titles. But it did not look like the feud would end here. Definitely the heel side would get a rematch very soon. The feud actually started from this week’s RAW after Sonya and Chelsea became no. 1 contenders and Chelsea threw water on the face of Morgan.