WWE Friday Night Smackdown Thread: The Horror Show at Extreme Rules Go Home Edition

It's the final WWE show before Sunday's Horror Show at Extreme Rules (and... if you care... IMPACT Wrestling's biggest show of the year... Slammiversary... is on PPV tomorrow night... and with the end of the 90 day no compete clauses... several of the wrestlers released by WWE on April 15 are expected to show up there... including but not limited to the Good Bros & Heath Slater)

Brosef Stalin's Wednesday night prediction of an easy NXT ratings win this week to make it 4 straight weeks of NXT overall ratings victories proved to be very incorrect as the "Demo-God" Chris Jericho & the rest of AEW beat NXT by roughly 120,000 viewers on Wednesday night... but that's not the main story

More importantly... the combined audiences of NXT & AEW are now almost equal to the numbers that Raw & Smackdown are doing currently... which is a major problem for WWE. In fact... Raw on Monday was its second worst ratings number ever... and if Smackdown wants to keep WWE headed in that downward trajectory... Bruce & Vince just need to keep doing such great segments like the women's karaoke segment last week that was so universally praised [\sarcasm]

And it's hard for WWE to blame its ratings issues on the pandemic because NXT is already back to or some weeks even better than its pre-pandemic numbers

But the pandemic may be causing issues for 1 brand that was trying to rebuild itself. News came out that Billy Corgan may be thinking about scrapping the NWA amid the issues not just surrounding the pandemic, but also the #SpeakingOut movement that cost NWA 1 of its top executives. Corgan himself has come out to try and shoot these rumors down but for all anyone knows... he could just be trying to save face

And... if you care... NXT's Tegan Nox has openly come out as a lesbian... maybe she'll get called up to the main roster to team up with Sonya Deville and reform the amazing women's tag team of The Lesbians

Tonight's WWE Friday Night Smackdown is from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Fla.

Is the House that AJ Styles built about to become the Bro Show as Styles defends his Intercontinental Championship against the Original Bro Matt Riddle

We'll head back to the Firefly Fun House with Bray Wyatt to see if He will possibly show up in the Swamp Fight on Sunday

Alexa Bliss will grace us with her presence as she will have a special guest in A Moment of Bliss

And because I know this thread is just begging for it...