The first-ever WWE Smackdown World Cup will commence next week onwards on the weekly episode of Friday Night Smackdown on FOX. The announcement came during the latest Smackdown episode as the announcers noted an 8-person tournament will get underway on next week’s show set from the Banker Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Interestingly, no other details were provided regarding the inaugural WWE Smackdown World Cup. Last month during a press conference around the international premium live event, Clash at the Castle, Last month, WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H revealed plans for WWE to introduce certain “World Cup-type scenarios” on WWE programming.
WWE Smackdown: Top Teams Booked For Major Title Match On November 11
Primarily, it was assumed that the tournament would feature the main NXT brand the soon-to-be-launched NXT Europe or some other branches around the brand. These brands were assumed to be competing against WWE’s main roster brands in a World Cup scenario featuring Superstars from various nationalities as Triple H stated the following,
“So I think you’ll see NXT Europe — and as I mentioned the other day in some interviews — I think the long-term goal in that is to be in markets all around the world with products that can eventually be competing against each other. World cup-type scenarios that are feeding into Raw to SmackDown and to WrestleMania.”
Royal Rumble 2023: Two Massive WWE Returns Planned To Happen?
International Superstars to compete on WWE Smackdown World Cup?
However, now it appears the eight Superstars will be competing in the WWE SmackDown World Cup tourney as they will be representing eight different countries. Since WWE is yet to reveal the details around the same, all of these theories appear to be speculation at this point.
Some of the global Superstars that could be a part of the WWE Smackdown World Cup are Drew McIntyre (Scotland), Sheamus (Republic of Ireland), Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER (Austria), Santos Escobar (Mexico), Sami Zayn (Canada) and Shinsuke Nakamura (Japan).
Although there’s no update on whether the female superstars will be a part of the tournament, some of the international names on the blue brand are Natalya (Canada), Xia Li (China), Emma (Australia), and Raquel Rodriguez (Mexico).
Apart from WWE Smackdown World Cup, next week’s lineup includes Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Santos Escobar in a singles match, and The New Day’s Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston challenging for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Titles held by The Usos/The Brawling Brutes.
