WWE SmackDown results, highlights (June 13): CM Punk, John Cena switch roles; Cody Rhodes advances in King of the Ring
The first episode of "WWE SmackDown" after Money in the Bank took place at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. The show kicked the build to June 28's Night of Champions into high gear with four King and Queen of the Ring first-round matchups and continued building toward a massive clash between CM Punk and John Cena.
Let's get right into it!
Main-event math isn't adding up
Cena opening the show laying out his grand, calculated plan that has played out over the past 25 years was a solid promo. He even spit hot fire when he listed his wrestling Mount Rushmore — just don't ask him who the five greatest rappers of all time are (these are "Chappelle's Show" references, for the younger generation reading this).
Advertisement
Cena was then interrupted by Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton and LA Knight, who each cut a promo on the 17-time champ explaining why they were going to dethrone him. Rhodes has a natural case since he never got his rematch against Cena after WrestleMania 41 and just pinned him at Money in the Bank last weekend. Orton also has a legitimate claim since his match at Backlash was spoiled by R-Truth. LA Knight, on the other hand, doesn't really fit in here, especially since he continues to come up short on big stages.
The truth is that none of these REALLY make sense right now though, because Cena is facing CM Punk in a Undisputed WWE Championship match at Night of Champions in two weeks, and therein lies the problem. The talent involved aside, this main-event picture has too much going on and quite frankly, it's hard to buy into any of these challengers as Cena's SummerSlam feud because we have the Punk hurdle to get over first. This segment somewhat undermines a potentially epic feud and works infinitely better three weeks from now, at the very least.
Advertisement
Essentially, this open served as a way to get Knight and Orton into the ring for their King of the Ring first-round match and for Truth/Ron Killings to attack Cena as he made his exit and set up a brilliant segment later on in the night that earned our...
👑 Uncrowned Gem of the Night 👑
If math was the theme of the "SmackDown" open, hypocrisy was the theme of the way Hour Three of the show kicked off and I'm taking part in it. Cena, furious after being attacked by Killings, went to the ring to call out the veteran but was instead greeted by Punk.
My Uncrowned colleague Drake Riggs alluded to the nonsensical nature of this somewhat thrown together feud once it started on Monday, but I'm ok contradicting him four days later because when these two are in the ring together, it's magic, plain and simple.
Advertisement
During his extended promo, Punk pointed out exactly what makes this hopefully not abbreviated feud so special — essentially he and Cena have flipped spots from where they were over a decade ago. We got a tease of how special this can be in 2025 during the Elimination Chamber, Friday added to that hype and this should be given plenty of time to shine, not muddied up with Rhodes, Orton, Knight and even Truth right now.
Kings and Queens
The King and Queen of the Ring tournaments continued on Friday night, with two more first-round, fatal four-way matches taking place. The opening contest was an absolute banger between Knight, Orton, Aleister Black and Carmelo Hayes. Orton emerged victorious, pinning Knight after interference from Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed — continuing the feud between the Megastar and the Rollins crew. Orton also pulled off an impressive, mid-frog splash RKO on Hayes, further illustrating why it's on the short list of the best finishers in wrestling today.
The main event of the night was the other men's first-round matchup, pitting Rhodes against Damian Priest, Shinsuke Nakamura and Andrade. Much like the first match, this was a very entertaining matchup involving four stars with contrasting styles. Naturally, Rhodes pulled out the victory and will face the winner of the final "Raw" first-round matchup. With the American Nightmare and Orton on seperate sides of the bracket, a showdown between them would be a really awesome cap to the tournament.
On the women's side, Jade Cargill advanced over Michin, Jax and Piper Niven. A Cargill win in this tournament is precisely where WWE should be going, lining her up to face Tiffany Stratton and then get cashed in on mid-match or post-win by Naomi. Cargill takes on "Raw's" Roxanne Perez in the semifinals.
The other women's first-round match saw Alexa Bliss pin Candice LeRae in a creative finish that furthered the simmering tensions between Bliss and Charlotte Flair. Bliss faces the winner of the final first-round contest, set for "Raw" on Monday night.
Naomi's revolution continues
Fresh off her Money in the Bank win, Naomi continued her impressive heel turn with a strong segment before getting interrupted by Stratton. There's really great potential here for a drawn-out "will she" or "won't she" feud here considering Stratton cashed in earlier this year to win the WWE Women's Championship and now faces the very same threat.
[Wyatt] Sicks of this
The Wyatt Sicks have a very cool entrance, and maybe there's a future where this angle works better than it currently is, but if you just listened to the crowd during the Motor City Machine Guns-Joe Gacy/Dexter Lumis match, you'd have been able to hear a pin drop. Hyperbole aside, isn't there supposed to be some sort of supernatural aspect at play here? If you're going to book the stable as an overwhelming, threatening force, book them that way. Instead, what we got was a decent, but forgettable, TV tag match.
Smack Talk 🗣️
1. Jacob Fatu's first promo since his betrayal of Solo Sikoa at Money in the Bank was good, but Sikoa interrupting and making demands doesn't quite work at this point since Fatu — the United States Champion — has the upper-hand by all accounts. This feels like a rehash of parts of what we've seen over the past five years of the Bloodline saga and it's not ideal for anyone involved.
2. I think I speak for everyone when I say we do not need to see Jax and Stratton feuding any more. After losing her Queen of the Ring match by getting tackled through the ringside barricade, Jax hung around and pounced after a promo segment between Stratton and Naomi. Jax had her run as champion and even got a somewhat bizarre title shot last month, which she lost. You know what "SmackDown" has and could use a breath of fresh air? The Women's United States Championship. Let Jax feud there with the winner of Zelina Vega and Giulia.
Book it! ✏️
"SmackDown" GM Nick Aldis gave Truth a match against Cena next week after the former's second ambush of the night. If you give me the pencil for next week's show, Truth-Cena is the opener, but Cena doesn't show up. If this new version of Truth is going to work, losing to Cena (again) doesn't help him and let's be honest — Cena isn't (and shouldn't) lose in that spot anyway.
Truth can become frustrated further and attack someone later in the match, opening the door for a kayfabe suspension and allowing Cena to come back for the "go-home" episode the following Friday.
👑 This "WWE SmackDown" wasn't without its issues, but it did have some great matchups and solid promos. All things considered, I give this show a Crown score of: 7/10. 👑
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
18 minutes ago
- Forbes
MSNBC's Chris Hayes Told Me AI Will Radically Change Social Media. Here's How
Woman in her 20s getting ready in the morning, laptop half open, reading text message As social media continues to evolve in how it captures our attention, using an algorithm to make sure we're clicking and scrolling, there is a whole new frontier facing us. In the coming years, one expert told me social media will start to expand beyond doomscrolling to make sure we all stay riveted to content for longer periods of time—even rivaling popular streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu. Chris Hayes knows a lot about capturing attention. He is a former print journalist who now hosts a primetime news program on MSNBC. He has an engaging style on his show and an equally impressive writing style. His book The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource is about battling distractions in life. Hayes offered insights about how social media will continue to evolve—mostly by keeping us hooked to our feeds—that suggest we're in for a wild ride. Early in the book, Hayes writes about how distraction is nothing new. At one time, reading a novel was considered a distraction from real life. Hayes also mentions the advent of radio and television as a serious cause for concern. (I guess we lost that battle. We now watch almost three hours of television per day on average.) With social media, the next phase of distraction—according to Hayes—will not center on capturing attention but on holding and sustaining our attention. We currently spend a little over two hours on social media apps per day, according to recent reports. Hayes says the advent of artificial intelligence might keep us hooked far longer. 'TikTok is probably the most sophisticated in this regard,' he says. 'The model, as I say in the book, is the iterative grabbing of attention for little bursts over and over like the slot machine. One thing I do wonder about is whether AI will get good enough that companies can start to use the experimental method that runs the algorithms to actually make longer form stories.' Hayes described an example where you might be grabbed by a news story or some other piece of content, and then the AI will monitor how users click, scroll, and react. Over time, the AI would then adjust the story, graphics, and even the entire narrative to maximize sustainability. That means social media will not only hook us on content but keep us hooked far longer, perhaps as long as television. Hayes did tell me we're in an interesting phase where there is plenty of AI slop out there and some of that content is not exactly holding or sustaining our attention. We seem to know what AI-generated content looks like when we see an image on Instagram or watch a video on Facebook. Some studies suggest we can identify AI content about 70% of the time. That study is from 2025, however. Recently, new studies are starting to reveal that humans misidentify AI content a little more often and it is going to get worse. Eventually, we don't know the difference. Hayes says this phase of knowing when something is created by an AI might be short-lived as the technology (and the algorithms) improve. 'One obvious way [to sustain our attention] is populating our online universe with 'people' that aren't really people but rather increasingly sophisticated Turing-test-passing bots that are trying to sell us stuff or push some political project,' he explained. When an AI can create content, capture our attention, and then adjust the content based on user reaction, we might all be at the mercy of the bots. As AI improves and social media seeks to steal us away from apps like Netflix, Hayes says the trick is to train ourselves to recognize when we're being sucked into the void. He suggests spending at least 20 minutes per day without any technology—alone with our own thoughts. He also says it's important to avoid isolation. We tend to scroll more (and for longer periods of time) when we are alone and bored, he says. 'Spend time with people you like and love,' he suggests. That might be the ultimate cure. After all, the best way to avoid the allure of AI and social media is to do something so cool in life that you don't even need distractions anymore.
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Our 'Most Famous Delawarean' poll is back. Submit your nominations ... now
When Delaware Online/The News Journal launched its first "Most Famous Delawareans" poll in 2018, it made a national splash, landing on "Saturday Night Live," "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," "Conan" and the pages of People magazine. Now it's time for our readers to do it again. Nominations are officially open below with the first round of voting set to begin June 28 with several rounds following before a winner is announced in late July. Even before Aubrey Plaza landed her role on "The White Lotus," the First State's downright lovable actress ran away with our "Most Famous Delawarean" poll, winning 42% of the votes. And the comedian made sure to milk her title for laughs in the years following. On "The Late Show," two years after the poll, the 2002 Ursuline Academy graduate jokingly threatened to sue Delaware Online/The News Journal as she riffed on language used by President Donald Trump after he lost to President Joe Biden. With Biden as the then-president-elect, arguably making him the most famous person in the world, Plaza was not about to give up her title. "I will not concede," the Wilmington native told Colbert. "In fact, I have many lawsuits coming after The News Journal, the Delaware News Journal. So they better watch out and they better count all their clicks. It was an online poll and I want those clicks counted." Three years later, when the former "Saturday Night Live" page got her first opportunity to host the venerable NBC late-night sketch show, her monologue featured the poll. "I was actually voted the most famous person from Delaware. I beat Joe Biden and he was pissed. He was livid," she joked. Plaza then queued up a video clip from Biden himself, and the president did not cast shade on her claims of the crown: "Aubrey, you're the most famous person in Delaware; there's no question about that. We're just glad you made it out of 'White Lotus' alive!'' Even before her nationally televised plugs for the poll, People magazine wrote about the results in 2018, headlined "Aubrey Plaza Trolled Joe Biden on Twitter After Being Named Delaware's Most Famous Person." 'I honestly don't know how I did that! He didn't even make it in the Top 3. And I was trolling him on Twitter!' she was quoted as saying to talk show host Conan O'Brien. 'I was like, 'How did this happen? You were vice president!'" Her Biden troll came when she reposted the results and tagged the then-former vice president, who grew up in Claymont: "What's up @JoeBiden?" While Plaza won the crown, it might come as a surprise that Biden didn't come in second. In fact, he didn't come in third, fourth or fifth either. The future president came in sixth place. Late jazz phenom Clifford Brown (Wilmington) came in second, late former Philadelphia Phillies player and manager Dallas Green (Newport) was third, former WNBA star Elena Delle Donne (Wilmington) landed in fourth place and political commentator Bill Press (Delaware City) rounded out the top five. STRUTTIN' Aubrey Plaza is back on red carpet at Cannes promoting 'Honey, Don't' summer film LETTERS Residents offer support for President Joe Biden after cancer diagnosis The top 10 also included rocker George Thorogood (Brandywine Hundred) in seventh place, political operative and podcaster Dan Pfeiffer (Wilmington) in eighth, actress Elisabeth Shue (Wilmington) in ninth and Heimlich maneuver namesake Henry Heimlich (Wilmington) in 10th place. Who will be in the top 10 this year? It's up to you. Nominations close June 19. Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@ or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier). This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Can Aubrey Plaza defend her title against Joe Biden in their rematch?
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
2025 Most-Famous Delawareans. Tell us who you think is the most famous
It is time to relaunch Delaware Online/The News Journal. The first round of voting kicks off June 28, followed by multiple rounds before the winner is announced in late July. In 2018, voters crowned a clear winner — Aubrey Plaza. The original top 10 featured talents from across the spectrum: from legendary jazz musician Clifford Brown to WNBA star Elena Delle Donne, from rock icon George Thorogood to life-saving doctor Henry Heimlich. With Delaware's deep bench of accomplished natives — politicians, athletes, artists, thinkers, and entertainers — the 2025 race is wide open. Will a new name top the list this time? That's up to you. Submit your nominations now through June 19, and help decide who gets the crown this year. This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: 2025 Most-Famous Delawareans. Tell us who you think is the most famous
