SmackDown Recap and Reactions (January 17, 2025): Addendum

This week’s episode of Friday night SmackDown began with a surprise – the legendary Rey Mysterio made his way to make an announcement. It’s that time of year, so it wasn’t really a surprise what exactly this announcement was.

He takes part in the Royal Rumble.

This adds to a growing list of big stars already announced for the game. He went through this list while talking about how tough the competition is this year. However, he has made history before and believes he can do it again.

When he won in 2006, he did so for a good friend, someone we all know and still love. And then a chorus of boos rang out with Kevin Owens’ music.

Hey, this is San Diego and this is Rey Mysterio. You just can’t interrupt him at a moment like this.

Owens immediately made it clear that he respects few in this industry as much as Rey, in fact, he wouldn’t put anyone above himself. So he’s just here to say that he hopes Mysterio wins the Royal Rumble and that he really wants Rey to pick him for the match WrestleMania. It’s a dream game for him!

There’s just one problem, which Rey was quick to point out.

“You are not the champion. Cody is the champion.”

But if circumstances change, he would be more than happy to give KO exactly what he asks. Owens naturally bristled at the idea that he wasn’t a champion, considering he still carries around the winged eagle belt he supposedly earned. When Rey compared him to Dominik, everything went off the rails.

Mysterio prevailed in a brief physical altercation and it was a fun way to open the show. It’s always a joy when Rey gets something worthwhile to do, and it’s worth noting that WWE is actually taking the time to add some depth to the Men’s Rumble this year. By this I don’t just mean announcing people in advance, but creating a story about their potential victory to give their appearance meaning beyond just “trying to main event WrestleMania.”

Not long after, Mysterio applied to general manager Nick Aldis for a one-on-one game that night, and it was accepted. Rhodes appeared to apologize for not being there and still trying to get free.

By the way, he received the clearance in question.

Oh, and Aldis wrote an addendum to the contract for the ladder match at the Royal Rumble and he needs both Rhodes and Owens to sign it. Cody said he would only do this after KO.

Aldis later turned to Owens, who gave the same answer as the WWE Champion. He won’t sign until Cody and actually he’s getting ready for a game so don’t bother him because he won’t sign until he reads it completely either.

At no point did they tell us what the addendum was.

When the time came, Owens and Mysterio had a fantastic match, a back and forth battle with Owens winning with the pop-up powerbomb. He pretended to respectfully leave it behind with a handshake, but then settled for a package pile driver. Rhodes came to the scene to put a stop to it, charging at his Royal Rumble opponent like a man possessed. A super hot fight was quickly broken up by a gang of officers.

Both men were taken away, but everything worked out great in San Diego.

It’s nice to see WWE using hometown heroes so well.

Aldis never revealed the addendum, but instead told Rhodes that they both had to show up Main event on Saturday evening giving up their titles to be hung above the ring Royal Rumble and sign the contract with the above mentioned addendum. However, he won’t be the one watching over it – it’ll be San Antonio’s Shawn Michaels.

I understand the idea considering the show is in his hometown and he has a connection to ranked play and so on. But maybe I’m in the bubble here, because to me he’s as well-known as the guy who runs NXT as he is the king of ranked play. It almost feels strange for WWE to use him as some kind of recurring legend like this.

Just me?

In any case, it was all great.

They did an interview with Bayley where she talked about winning the Royal Rumble and moving forward WrestleMania to win the Iyo Sky Women’s Championship. She thought she would do something big from there and really change the scene. But her reign was cut short SummerSlam when Tiffany Stratton helped Nia Jax defeat her and win the title.

That’s why their match tonight would be about more than just the belt, it would be personal.

They were given the main venue and about 25 minutes to do their thing. The work in the match was good, but I never really got into it, and the longer they played, the more it felt like they had lost the audience. This included Bayley hitting her Bayley-to-Belly a second time and getting little reaction to the pinfall attempt that followed.

The reason for the discrepancy was likely because fans seemed to want Stratton to win far more than Bayley. The most beautiful moonsault of all time got a big bang and the pinfall that gave him the title had the crowd cheering as if the hero had just fended off a top heel challenger.

This will be a solid win for Stratton, and that’s all it would ever be.

Jimmy Uso makes an appearance not unlike his brother Jey, who he does so often Rawand he made a short but actually strong promotional message saying he was happy for his brother and now he had to do the same and go for gold for himself on this side of the business. That starts with taking out Carmelo Hayes.

For his part, Hayes called out Big Jim for standing in the shadow of a brother who himself is in the shadow of Roman Reigns. He was a good heel promoter to get the babyface over.

But of course that would never happen, as Jacob Fatu and Tama Tonga showed up to trigger a no contest, eliminating Jimmy in the process. Hell, they even turned off ‘Melo when he tried to act like a buddy with them. This was the start of the grand return of Solo Sikoa, still wearing a red jacket and seemingly still commanding the loyalty of his troops.

SIkoa got the dirty dom treatment and fans refused to let him speak. Instead of even trying, he dropped the microphone, took off his jacket, threw it over his shoulder, and walked out through the crowd. Fatu and Tonga remained alone in the ring as fans chanted “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye” to Sikoa.

Fatu grabbed the microphone and said he was tired of the disrespect, hate and envy. But even on his bad day, you still can’t touch me. I don’t care if you cheer for us, I don’t care if you boo us. But there’s one thing I won’t allow you to do: pretend I never have mine.”

He said if we thought he was unhinged, we should know he’s just getting started.

LA Knight showed up to crash the promo, got picked off and pushed into the corner. Braun Strowman then returned and duked it out with Fatu before Tonga pulled Fatu out of the ring and the heels ran away. Meanwhile, Knight was back on his feet and the babyfaces took the ring together.

The whole house was in great heat, even though we received no response at all from Sikoa. If anything, they just made Fatu look like a much bigger star again.

Everything else

• Naomi told Bianca Belair that there is still no update on the investigation into who attacked Jade Cargill. Meanwhile, the two cleared the air last week. No problems between them. They then went on to defeat Nia Jax and Candice LeRae in a non-title match, a fairly straightforward affair that saw Jax accidentally floor her teammate with a big leg drop before the finish. They quickly announced that a women’s tag title defense against the Meta Girls was coming up for NXT Television. It’s still not clear to me where this Cargill thing is going, and they don’t seem to be in a hurry.
• Piper Niven as Secret Service to Chelsea Green is fantastic. She did so here, exploring a room with B-Fab and Michin before saying “No threats detected” just before Green entered. Incredible. B-Fab talked her way into a one-on-one match with Niven so she could get out of the picture. You won’t be surprised to learn that Green was out and used a distraction to give Niven a quick win. After the game, they launched an attack that only resulted in Michin rushing out and making a save.
• The Motor City Machine Guns had one heck of a game against Los Garza, which received chants of “This is great” before the goal. Pretty Deadly showed up to help Garza, but their distraction failed and Shelley and Sabin still emerged victorious. The comments discussed how this was probably preparing them for a try at DIY, which is why Pretty Deadly were out there trying to help them. Not much, but good wrestling here.
• Johnny Gargano attacked Apollo Crews backstage and told him to “keep our name out of your mouth.” So they’re definitely going to try to do more with Crews than just have him play as a supporting actor backstage, but the role he played as a supporting actor backstage was fun.

WWE did a great job of keeping this show really exciting, even after extending it to three hours. They still deliver quite a bit without overwhelming you.

It’s always worth tuning into this show.

Grade: B-

It’s your turn.