WWE Smackdown will be taping contents for two straight weeks, next Friday night. It appears that two title matches and a match under stipulation will be taped as per announcements from this week.
The February 11 episode will feature Naomi vs. WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair with the latter’s title on the line. The match was made by Sonya Deville and Adam Pearce on this week’s episode as the Deville vs. Naomi feud continued. It was Pearce who made the match after a bit of persuasion by Naomi while Deville was obviously opposing the idea.
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Naomi previously locked horns with the WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion in non-title matches and on both occasions, Sonya Deville cost her those matches by interfering. It’s likely that Deville will still be trying to distract her since this time the title will be on the line.
Next week’s WWE Smackdown will have the fourth match between Natalya and Aliyah on the card. Natalya has picked the stipulation for the match, saying that she wants it to be Dungeon-style, where the win can be earned by pinfall or submission. Nattie also shared a backstage segment with Xia Li which possibly hinted at an involvement by the Chinese Superstar in the upcoming match.
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Natalya and Aliyah have been involved in a feud for a few weeks. Incidentally, Aliyah has defeated Natalya in three of their bygone matches – via pinfall in just 3.17 seconds on January 14, by disqualification on January 21, and by count-out on this week’s WWE SmackDown.
Intercontinental Title will be on the line on WWE Smackdown
Apart from these two matches for next week, WWE has also announced a title match for the February 18 WWE SmackDown, which is the go-home episode for Elimination Chamber. WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura will defend against Sami Zayn. Since Zayn has continued his beef with Jackass star Johnny Knoxville, it was teased that Knoxville may be present for Zayn vs. Nakamura title match.
Zayn has been the number-one contender to Nakamura as he won the 12 Days of Christmas Gauntlet on the December 24 edition of WWE SmackDown. But his title match opportunity was delayed due to Nakamura’s injury.
As noted above, WWE will tape both February 11 and 18 episodes of Smackdown, next week from the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana as they will have to visit Saudi Arabia for Elimination Chamber before February 19.