Two New Matches Added to Night of Champions 2023, Updated Card
Friday’s SmackDown show in Knoxville, Tennessee featured a new match and an updated match officially announced for the card of WWE’s Night of Champions 2023 event, which takes place on May 27th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The new match was announced to be an Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship match of The Bloodline (Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa) vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn (c).
During a promo segment involving the Bloodline, Roman Reigns took offense to The Usos recently losing their chance at regaining the Undisputed WWE Tag Team titles. Reigns was the most upset at The Usos dedicating their win to him and failing to follow through which Reigns claimed disrespected him and the family name. Following a tense standoff between Reigns and Jimmy Uso over Reigns demanding an apology, Jey Uso interrupted and apologized for their failure and stated they would both challenge for the titles again and promised to win it this time. This offer was rejected by Reigns who let Paul Heyman reveal that it would be Reigns and Sikoa challenging for the tag titles at Night of Champions instead.
BREAKING: At #WWENOC @SamiZayn and @FightOwensFight will defend their Undisputed WWE Tag Team Titles against…@WWESoloSikoa and @WWERomanReigns đ§âď¸#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/ncb3rbpRVn
â WWE (@WWE) May 13, 2023
The updated match announced was the WWE World Heavyweight Championship Tournament Finals match of Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles. This match was made official following AJ Styles defeating Bobby Lashley in the finals of the SmackDown side of the tournament. Styles had defeated Edge and Rey Mysterio in the first Triple Threat tournament match while Lashley had defeated Austin Theory and Sheamus in the second Triple Threat tournament match earlier in the show.
Updated card for Night of Champions 2023:
- WWE World Heavyweight Championship Tournament Finals match – Seth Rollins vs. AJ Styles
- Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship – The Bloodline (Roman Reigns & Solo Sikoa) vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn (c)
- Cody Rhodes vs. Brock Lesnar
Becky Lynch on Winning WWE Women’s Tag Titles with Lita was “Never Meant to be the Plan”
A recent episode of the Mark Andrews My Love Letter to Wrestling podcast featured Becky Lynch as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Lynch’s thoughts on feeling that her winning WWE’s Women’s Tag Team Championship with Lita was “never meant to be the plan” for the belts.
“Well, it was all a bit crazy (winning Womenâs Tag Titles with Lita). When that was decided, I donât think that was never meant to be the plan and then they just took a side road and decided that would be the best outcome and I think what was so great going into that match was that nobody knew what was going to happen and people had ideas and this could happen and then we could go this way or we could go that way and there was so many ways we could go and then to be standing side by side with the woman that inspired you to get into this in the first place when weâre talking about that grassroots thing of being back and I was coming down with my dyed red hair and my baggy pants and wearing my thong outside my clothes and trying to look like Lita and here I was standing side by side as an equal about to go capture the tag titles. If youâre telling your teenage self thatâs gonna happen when youâre older, teenage self would slap you across the face and tell you to get realistic, you know what I mean? So yeah, it was really awesome but sheâs over the years become such a great friend and a mentor and I think because she was that misfit, that little rock and roll grunger that had big dreams and she recognized that in me, that it didnât necessarily fit the mold but I had that love for the business and I think weâve kind of been kindred spirits in that way. Sometimes as a babyface, I almost donât know how to interact with other babyfaces because The Man is so untrusting of everybody because sheâs been burned so many times that sometimes Iâm like⌠hello friend? (she laughed) I feel very awkward in that setting but if I was going to have a tag team partner, you couldnât ask for better. But even having gotten to do the story with her last year, as short as it was, it was one of the stories in wrestling that Iâve been most proud of and one of the matches Iâm most proud of so now Iâve had a lot of history with the person who inspired me the most, the woman who inspired me the most which is great.”
Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com
More on NXT Week 187 Viewership â May 9, 2023
The May 9th episode of WWE NXT saw NXT gain a large increase in overall viewership and a small increase in key demographic ratings and key demographic rankings.
NXT drew 601,000 viewers and a 0.17 key demographic rating on USA Network. NXTâs key demographic ranking for that night was 12th place.
Detailed viewership and key demographic breakdowns were not available in this weekâs Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Dave Meltzer reported that the main reason for NXTâs increases this week was due to the large gains from their younger key demographic viewership and older key demographic viewership groups, which were up 20% and 30.2% respectively compared to last week’s show. This reportedly offset the small decline from their Over 50 viewership group, which was down 3.2% compared to last week’s show.
In terms of head-to-head competition, the 2023 NBA Playoffs Game 5 of Philadelphia 76ers vs. Boston Celtics drew 4,883,000 viewers on TNT, the 2023 NHL Playoffs Game 4 of Dallas Stars vs. Seattle Kraken crew 1,259,000 viewers on ESPN, the 2023 NHL Playoffs Game 4 of Carolina Hurricane vs. New Jersey Devils drew 1,139,000 viewers on ESPN, the MLB game of Boston Red Sox vs. Atlanta Braves drew 234,000 viewers on TBS, Curse of Oak Island drew 2,571,000 viewers on History Channel, 7 Little Johnstons drew 763,000 viewers on TLC, and Real Housewives of New Jersey drew 821,000 viewers on Bravo.
In terms of key demographic viewership, NXT had 222,000 viewers. Meltzer reported that the male/female viewership split was 143,000 male viewers (up 30%) and 79,000 female viewers (up 19.7%) for a split of 64.4% in favor of males.
In terms of yearly comparisons, NXT was up 12.8% in overall viewership and up 70.8% in key demographic viewership. Meltzer reported that NXTâs 18-34 viewership was up 200% compared to the same week last year.
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