A United States Championship match was going to be the main event of this past edition of Smackdown Live.
A rivalry is building up between Jeff Hardy and Shinsuke Nakamura for quite sometimes. A social media banter caused a match between these two a few weeks ago. It ended with a pendant low blow by Nakamura.
Jeff Hardy did not take the matter lightly and wanted to seek revenge on the heel superstars. So Paige made it official once again from Smackdown. She confirmed Jeff Hardy vs Shinsuke Nakamura was happening once again. This time around, the US title would be on the line. But the match never happened. WWE dropped it all of a sudden.
Jeff Hardy issued an open challenge to any one of the Smackdown locker room. Eric Young from the SAnitY group accepted it and got into a match against Hardy. Later The Usos joined them to set up a six-man tag team match. The question remains why we could not see a dream match between two marquee players of the blue brand.
Wrestling Observer Newsletter came up with a report on this situation. Nakamura had suffered a bizarre injury the night before Smackdown Live. It forced him to miss the taped show in Ontario, California.
From @davemeltzerWON: Shinsuke Nakamura was bit in the leg by a police dog at the arena in Bakersfield yesterday. https://t.co/94msXrM9Sf
— Wrestling Observer (@WONF4W) June 26, 2018
A Smackdown house show took place on Monday night in Bakersfield, California. A police dog bit Nakamura’s leg according to the source. It happened just before the show started on that night. As a result, the Artist was unable to perform on that live event as well. The doctors might have kept him under observations which is why Nakamura did not show up on Tuesday Night too.
Smackdown interviewer, Dasha Fuentes informed us about Nakamura’s injury before the show began. She did not disclose the reason or extent of the injury. Instead, we got to know the marquee match was off from the card. A US Open Challenge would replace this contest.
It was not the only change of matches on the card on this week’s Smackdown. We learned about a singles contest between Becky Lynch and Peyton Royce on the show. The reality turned out to be much different. Lynch was in action against Sonya Deville, instead. We are yet to know about the reason for this alteration.
