Welcome toWrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE SmackDown," the show that gave us the second half of a Crown Jewel 2025 match when Tiffany Stratton retained the WWE Women's Championship in the main event. That wasn't the only notable thing that happened Jacob Fatu returned, Je'Von Evans got a US title match, and Melo Don't Miz appears to be no more!
We'll cover all that and more here in the column, along with pretty much everything else that happened Friday night (with apologies to the women's tag match, which was good but otherwise unremarkable). As usual, if you're just needing to catch up with everything that went down, our "SmackDown" results page can help you with that. But if you want to know which matches and segments the WINC staff felt most passionately about (and why) here are three things we hated and three things we loved from the 9/26/25 episode of "WWE SmackDown!"
WWE unexpectedly brought back Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam. It was unexpected because he was kept off TV while still getting paid because he's named 44 times in a lawsuit by a former employee against the company and Vince McMahon.
Last week during a promo, Cody Rhodes referred to him as "controversial". They also teased a reunion with his "Advocate," Paul Heyman. During a promo Friday night while Heyman was discussing Lesnar, he made a reference to "conspiracy theories." It was an odd line and seemed to imply that Lesnar being kept off TV for so long was a conspiracy theory, even though he is alleged to be tied to some very egregious things in the aforementioned lawsuit. This is the same company that had Liv Morgan say and do things related to what's in the lawsuit Paul Levesque claimed he never read. Referencing the lawsuit is very on brand for them. The "oooh, he's controversial, he shouldn't be here" is a cavalier approach to having him on television. They are making light of an extremely serious situation.
WWE and McMahon have been trying to get the lawsuit sent to arbitration. The case is still being litigated and Lesnar has not been cleared in any way. WWE clearly think the case is going to go their way or at least want fans to perceive it that way, so they brought Lesnar back simply because they wanted to. It sends a message that Lesnar is more important to them than what their fans think or want. Lesnar would have been the recipient of a sex trafficking victim and attempted to do so on three separate occasions. This is extremely serious, and they act like it's nothing. Then again, they are inducting Corporate Officer Number 3 into the WWE Hall of Fame next year, so maybe it's just on brand.
Written bySamantha Schipman
I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to team up Carmelo Hayes and The Miz in the first place, but our long national nightmare appears to be over. On "SmackDown," Melo finally got tired of his partner's crap, responding to yet another Miz attempt at glory-hogging by holding him back and allowing their opponents, the Street Profits, to recover. The Profits proceeded to drop Miz like a bad habit, and though Hayes could have broken up the pinfall, he chose not to. Exactly how it should have been.
This served two equally valid purposes. First, it keeps the Profits in the tag title mix, where they should always be (and where their recent feud with champions The Wyatt Sicks suggested they were staying anyway). Second, it finally frees Hayes of the Miz-shaped anchor around his neck, assuming the inevitable feud between them is short. Hayes should not be having any issues putting away Miz at this point in their respective careers, and it's high time he got back to legitimate singles competition by which I mean, competing for championships. Triple H and his pet Road Dogg have kept Hayes sidelined in the doldrums of the tag ranks far, far long enough; I'm gratified to see some real progress being made in getting him the hell out of them.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
For a company that profits off of incredible athleticism, meticulous body conditioning, and the insane work ethic of their staff, WWE is incredibly lazy.
With Elton Prince on the shelf with injury, Pretty Deadly partner Kit Wilson has been left to desperately claw his way to relevancy on Fridays. Unfortunately, after his now-two run-ins with Damian Priest, it seems that he's been shackled with a new gimmick. The formerly flamboyant and jovial Wilson has gone sour, trading in his musical theatre references and ostentatious gear for what can only be described as an AI program's recollection of "woke" terminology, carelessly mishmashed together in a way that cannot even be described as word salad (because, in the words of one of our staff members, "salad" implies wholesome sustenance). No, Wilson's new gimmick is more akin to word slop, his terms mishmashed together until they bleeding into an amorphous, unrecognizable glob of what could technically be considered verbiage.
Okay, I know that Wilson's being positioned as a heel. I know the cowardly heel who hides behind mind games and fanciful words, for the sake of avoiding confrontation, is a common in-ring trope. However, a coward still has to be coherent (look at Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins' current gimmicks for scaredy-cat heels who run away from danger). Just because you're a heel who skirts away from violence doesn't mean you suddenly have an excuse to not make sense. Kit Wilson doesn't make sense.
When I made that AI shout (derogatory) earlier, I wasn't joking. Wilson's words are as shallow as anything those thought-stealing programs can spit out. He's throwing out terms like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchal trauma" without displaying any conscious understanding of those concepts. There's no actual human thought behind this gimmick. He's just yapping. If you really want to have a heel whose inherent evil relies on a mockery of genuine gender discourse concepts, then that's fine.Cohesion does not have a moral affiliation a"woke-"mocking heel can exist while making sense. Wilson is straight-up nonsensical, and that makes him even more unbearable to watch. It goes beyond face/heel dynamics it is a matter of "can I stomach hearing this man spit nonsense enough to get to the next segment." For me, the answer is no, and I'm turning off the program (or, it would be if I didn't have to watch this for my job).
I don't really get why they couldn't just run with the "Pretty Deadly" gimmick with Wilson acting as a one-man band, because he could have easily translated his career to a singles act. I don't even get how this lazy gimmick got greenlit past the writer's room. I can't imagine a wrestler pitching such a trash idea like this themselves. Is Wilson getting punished for some locker room sin? Why is he getting dealt such a horrendous, underresearched, throwaway gimmick?
This entire thing feels lazy. It's almost insulting that WWE would put this on TV, and expect us to give them the ad revenue.
Written by Angeline Phu
A feud between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu? Sign me up immediately for that.
Now I will absolutely be the first to admit that I'm more than a little biased here considering that McIntyre and Fatu are two of my favorite stars in all of WWE right now, so of course, I was bound to love any on screen interaction between the two men. The unexpected nature of the interaction between the two men, however, made it that much better for me. I completely thought that this was going to turn out to be another 'it wasn't my fault' kind of promo from McIntyre which would've been fine if not a bit uninspired so hearing Fatu's music hit instantly made me pop. When you combine that with the intensity of the promo and seeing McIntyre get so easily laid out by Fatu in something of a rare occurrence for him, it made for what I consider to be an instantly classic moment between the two men. It generated a ton of hype for the storyline that's bound to come between then, and was a preview of the surely good things that will come out of a match between them.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
It was Friday night and you should know what that meant: the Sami Zayn United States Championship open challenge returned, continued, and rocked in all its glory, with "WWE NXT" star Je'Von Evans answering it and staking his claim for the title and acclimating to the main roster in a way only he knows how.
If one is not familiar with his game, the first few words of his entrance quite literally encapsulate all that is well with the, all going well, future NXT Champion (sooner rather than later). He is just a very bouncy guy, selling and attacking like a genetic mutant hybrid from Miles Morales and a Sugar Glider. And it makes for a babyface dynamic like no other, every move just seems to impact that little bit more either way, and it put Zayn in this odd position of being the A-side rather than the "Underdog from the Underground," thus forcing him to work like the larger heel against Evans.
It was two men who run through trains just to get even a little bit of offense off, but they were channeled against one another, and you could really see the effort from Zayn's side to put the spotlight on what Evans could do. He is exactly the sort of name you would want to be stepping up for this open challenge series, on the cusp of breaking through the upper barrier of "NXT" and impervious to any sort of detriment that comes when he ultimately and eventually lost. More than that, he is just really good in the ring and has that connection with the crowd, you need only watch him for a minute and he would have already lured you in with a very "flippy" style that works within the confines of telling the story within the match.
It's a testament to Zayn and Evans that this match was as good as it was, and while Evans is getting much of the praise as the challenger in the spotlight, of course Zayn deserves a lion's share of praise for stepping into the John Cena role and doing this open challenge at a time when the company should be considering bringing talent up from developmental, as well as a building up the lower-to-midcard talent already on the main roster.
Written byMax Everett
Thank goodness Tiffany Stratton ended up retaining her WWE Women's Championship tonight to go on to face Women's World Champion Stephanie Vaquer at CrownJewel here in a few weeks, because "Tiffy Time" needs to be as far away from Jade Cargill, and especially Nia Jax, as possible right now, and neither Cargill or Jax should be challenging Vaquer after the sloppy match they put on tonight. I think I can speak for quite a few of us here at WINC that we weren't entirely thrilled that both Cargill and Jax were getting another match against Stratton, though we definitely didn't know what we were in for tonight.
Tonight's triple threat match was incredibly sloppy, and it just kept getting worse. It got to the point of being like a car crash you couldn't look away from and if you went on social media following "SmackDown," you really couldn't get away from the botch at the end, as the footage is currently posted everywhere.
There was some general sloppiness throughout the beginning of the match, but nothingtooterrible or, I hate to say it, out of the ordinary for a match involving Jax or Cargill. I thought things started to really go downhill when Cargill hit a Jaded on Stratton that didn't look great at all.
While I hated this match, I really do hope all the women involved are okay. The way Jax handled the end of the match had some of us wondering if she was possibly somehow concussed or something somewhere throughout the match, possibly during the steel steps spot with Cargill, and Cargill showed off her nasty gash to the camera before stopping short at ringside to have refereeDaphanie LaShaunn ran to her with a towel to attempt to put a little bit of pressure of it and mop up the blood.
The worst part of course was the clip that's all over X right now. Jax seemingly forgot to kick out. Cargill hit her withEye of the Storm, but Stratton broke up the fall and pinned Jax herself, and LaShaunn stopped the count at two when Jax didn't lift her shoulder off the mat. The way the camera was angled, it caught everything and the botch was one of the worst I've seen on TV in a long time.
Things wrapped up quickly after the awkward moment with a Prettiest Moonsault Ever, but I think this is one all three women would like to forget, and for everyone else to forget, as well. This match proved more than anything tonight that Stratton desperately needs some new challenges on the blue brand. Hopefully Bianca Belair will be cleared for action here soon, but if not, WWE needs to consider calling some women up from "WWE NXT" who are ready, even if it's just for a one-off match or feud with Stratton. While I wasn't looking forward to this match tonight, Ihad no idea how much I would end up hating it.
Written by DaisyRuth
