The tournament to crown the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion continued on May 12 on SmackDown. The show had three matches to determine who will challenge Seth Rollins, who emerged as a finalist after Raw’s three matches earlier this week.
AJ Styles, Edge & Rey Mysterio’s first round triple threat opened the episode. The three veterans had the Knoxville, Tennessee crowd almost eating out of their hands as they threw up several threes (of course there were a few spells when a man was out for a while, but not as many as you’d think – especially since one of the 40+ legends would be wrestling again tonight).
That man turned out to be Styles, who survived an edgecator when he made it to the ropes when Mysterio smashed in with a 6-1-9. AJ rallied as Edge countered something from Rey from above, hitting the Lucha legend with a phenomenal forearm.
The Phenomenal One had barely finished celebrating when Sheamus, Bobby Lashley and US Champion Austin Theory went head-to-head in their first-round Triple Threat. In this case, the vets trampled Theory after he tried to break free at the bell, setting the early tone for more frequent one-on-one stretching in the case. But that’s okay, because that basically meant mini-banger after mini-banger after mini-banger.
In the latter case, Lashley reappeared after being thrown into the steps to impale Sheamus after the latter hit a White Noise from above on Theory. A-Town threw Lashley into the post to try and steal the pin, blowing it open in the process. The Celtic Warrior kicked out and broke The All Might’s Hurt Lock on Theory with a brogue kick. But Bob recovered, knocking Sheamus out of the ring and covering Theory to progress.
The TNA legends then met in the main event. Styles was obviously undermatched in the power department, but chose his spots to play his speed and agility advantage. He aimed it at Lashley’s leg, softened it for the calf crush, and pulled out a couple of weapons from the big man’s arsenal.
In the end, it was another fall into the ring post that knocked out the All Mighty (his still-bleeding head actually managed to drive past the turnbuckles a couple of times). By dodging a javelin, AJ was able to jump the ropes for another Phenomenal Forearm and redeem his ticket to a date with Rollins in Jeddah.
Get the full SmackDown scores and full coverage of this week’s show here.
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