According to previous reports and cable guide listings, this Friday night’s episode of SmackDown from the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California will air on FS1 due to the MLB’s playoff games airing on FOX. It was also reported that this Friday’s episode of WWE SmackDown will be a “Supersized” edition, with cable listings showing that the episode will be two and a half hours long, which means that the final 30 minutes of WWE SmackDown will go head-to-head with the first 30 minutes of AEW Rampage.
The cable listings also showed that a replay of WWE Friday Night SmackDown will air immediately after the live broadcast, but it’s unclear if Talking Smack will be a part of the two and a half hour show.
Shortly after news got out that WWE’s SmackDown will be going head-to-head with AEW Rampage for about a half hour long, AEW President and CEO Tony Khan took to his Twitter and sent a warning to WWE owner and CEO Vince McMahon as well as the WWE that he saw they are doing a half hour head-to-head with AEW Rampage and he can’t wait to finally beat the WWE’s main show head-to-head as it has been a long time coming.
It seems that WWE has responded and has up the ante as fans have noted that during this past Saturday night’s Iowa vs. Penn State college football game on FOX, an ad aired to promote this coming Friday’s Supersized edition of WWE SmackDown on FS1, where it was revealed that the final 30 minutes of Friday night’s SmackDown will be commercial free.
This Friday’s Supersized edition of WWE SmackDown on FS1 will be the go-home show for WWE Crown Jewel and the show is stacked from top to bottom as we will see Carmella face Zelina Vega in a Queens Crown Tournament Semi-Finals Match, Finn Balor battle Sami Zayn in a King Of The Ring Tournament Semi-Final Match, Sonya Deville return to in-ring action to face Naomi, Brock Lesnar appearing and the SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch going one-on-one against Sasha Banks in a Non-title Main Event Matchup.
This could be the first and only time we see AEW Rampage go head-to-head with WWE SmackDown as if the WWE airs SmackDown on FS1, then there is more flexibility for extra time, but majority of the time we see WWE SmackDown air on FOX and FOX has a local news scheduled at 10PM ET immediately after WWE goes off the air and unless AEW somehow changes their schedule of Rampage and moves to an earlier timeslot then we will no longer see a head-to-head between AEW and the WWE for the time being.
You can check out the tweet below:
