My absolute favorite thing on tonight’s “SmackDown” was the opener with John Cena soaking up the adoration of the Chicago crowd (which was kind of funny, if you really stop and think about it) before going face-to-face with United States Champion Sami Zayn. I knew this match was going to happen tonight after seeing spoilers, but what I really loved was the way that it was set up.
Before Zayn came out, Cena talked about debuting in Chicago, when he confronted Kurt Angle in 2002 and unknowingly kicked of WWE’s Ruthless Aggression era. He basically told the crowd “goodbye and thank you,” to not just Chicago, but to “SmackDown” as a whole, as his remaining dates on the retirement tour are apparently on “WWE Raw” or just all premium live events, and I believe he only has about seven dates left. Zayn came out to kind of politely interrupt him. He said tonight wasn’t just special because Cena debuted in Chicago, he actually made his main roster debut against Cena, and the match was for the gold that Zayn now wears around his waist after being Solo Sikoa last week.
Zayn asked Cena if he could honor him by doing his own US Open Challenge. That’s what I really liked about this all. It makes sense for Zayn to be a fighting champion, and Cena made the US Open Challenge a thing back in 2015 after winning it at WrestleMania 31. If there’s one belt I associate more than the WWE Championship spinner belt with Cena, it’s the US title, so this was really cool and well done. Cena was just kind of like, “Okay, cool, that sounds great for you, you have my blessing,” and attempted to leave the ring, before Zayn challenged him to be the one to kick off the Zayn US Open Challenge.
I also really enjoyed the match, though my one complaint was that it was a bit too long with a lot of commercials that WWE had to fit in to get that last segment commercial-free. I’m really enjoying Cena’s finisher-palooza where he’s using the moves of those he can’t face on his retirement run. Tonight, the highlights included the pop-up powerbomb, which Kevin Owens even acknowledged on X, and the Angle Slam, which was incredibly appropriate.
It was a special match and opening segments, until Brock Lesnar had to interfere and F5 them both to cause the disqualification, and I loved that Zayn got to be a small part of Cena’s farewell tour, especially after he won gold and could defend it against him. While I certainly wish this could have ended in a clean victory for Zayn to help establish him as a dominant US Champion, of course Cena couldn’t lose before the big Lesnar match at Wrestlepalooza. Knowing all that was likely to happen, I chose to just be happy at how nice the set-up was with Zayn honoring Cena in a really cool way on his last-ever episode of “SmackDown.”
Written by Daisy Ruth