One of the matches set for tonight s Royal Rumble event is now taking place on the pre-show.
Women s Tag Team Champions Charlotte Flair & Asuka will defend their titles against Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler on tonight s Royal Rumble pre-show. The match being moved to the pre-show was first reported by PWinsider and has been confirmed by our Dave Meltzer.
Charlotte, Jax, and Baszler will be pulling double duty at the Royal Rumble, with all three also taking part in the women s Royal Rumble match.
Charlotte & Asuka won the women s Tag Team titles from Jax & Baszler at December s TLC PPV.
Asuka also currently holds the Raw Women s Championship. She isn t defending that title at the Royal Rumble tonight.
WWE has made a pair of announcements for tonight s Royal Rumble go-home edition of SmackDown.
- Ahead of their Last Man Standing match for the Universal Championship at Sunday s pay-per-view, Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens will engage in a war of words on SmackDown tonight. Tonight, Michael Cole will sit down with The Head of the Table and his resilient challenger en route to their Last Man Standing Match for the Universal Title at Sunday’s Royal Rumble, WWE.com wrote.
The show-closing angle of last week s SmackDown saw Owens give Reigns a pop-up powerbomb through the announce table. The week before that, WWE authority figure Adam Pearce revealed Owens as Reigns new Royal Rumble challenger. Reigns had forced Pearce into winning a gauntlet match to become the number one contender to the Universal title, but Pearce faked an injury and pointed out that standard WWE contracts say the card is subject to change. Pearce then announced that Reigns would be facing Owens at the Roya
WWE SmackDown Ratings For January 22nd Show
This week s WWE SmackDown ratings and viewership figures are in, and the show saw one of its steadiest figures across the broadcast s two hours in recent memory. According to the overnights published to Showbuzz Daily, SmackDown averaged 2.284 million viewers for hour number one and 2.280 million viewers for hour number two. Therefore, the average viewership for the show came in at 2.282 million viewers. If this number holds (final figures will be released on Monday), it would be up slightly compared to last week s SmackDown which averaged 2.262 million viewers.
In terms of pure viewership, SmackDown s 2.282 million ranked eighth place across network television on Friday night. The show was defeated by all other prime time programming on ABC, NBC, and CBS, including Shark Tank, 20/20, MacGyver, Magnum P.I., Blood Bloods, The Blacklist, and Dateline NBC.
Welcome to our WrestlingINC.com Live
WWE NXT Viewing Party. Tonight’s show comes from the Capitol Wrestling Center in Orlando, FL.
– Tonight’s WWE NXT episode opens up on the USA Network with a look back at the 2021 Men’s Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic kicking off last week. We also get hype for the Women’s Dusty Classic, which kicks off tonight, and the Fight Pit main event between Tommaso Ciampa and Timothy Thatcher.
– We’re live from the Capitol Wrestling Center at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida as Vic Joseph welcomes us. He’s joined at ringside by Wade Barrett and WWE Hall of Famer Beth Phoenix, who is making her return to ringside tonight after calling the action remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans chant “NXT!” as we see the Fight Pit structure set up in part of the arena.