Next Tuesday January 16 at 10pm, WWE launches WWE Mixed Match Challenge, it’s first interactive programming on Facebook Watch, Facebook’s new original video content platform, featuring mixed tag team contests in a tournament format, with the winning team winning $100,000 towards the charity of their choice. With Facebook Watch such a new platform, many are wondering just how they can watch this program – is it just as easy as logging into your already existing Facebook account and hitting play? Well, sort of. Thankfully, the WWE released a video explaining just how easy it is.
As Rick James previewed yesterday on Last Word on Pro Wrestling, the teams for the WWE Mixed Match Challenge are starting to get announced (with two more announced today) as we head into the final lead up week before the tournament begins, but as noted, there is one absent participant, in WWE Cruiserweight Champion Enzo Amore. Many expected Enzo to be paired with his current on-screen love interest, Nia Jax, but it was announced this weekend she’d be paired with the man who actually replaced Enzo in the tournament, Titus Worldwide’s Apollo Crews instead. While some speculate that Enzo may have been pulled as some sort of “punishment”, the real reason appears to be something far more precautionary than disciplinary. Due to the severity of Enzo’s current flu (which kept him from last Monday’s edition of Raw), Enzo was removed for fear of contaminating other Superstars. And while the tournament doesn’t begin for another week, all participants were corralled this past weekend to record their opening promos and WWE felt it best to keep Enzo home a little longer in case he was to possibly infect other members of the locker room.
Raw has now announced all of their teams except for one, which will see Bayley pair with the fan vote choice between Samoa Joe, Elias or Jason Jordan, while Smackdown Live still has three teams left to announce, with pairings from Natalya, Becky Lynch and Carmella with either Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura or the fan vote choice between the three members of the New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods). Raw‘s final team will most likely be announced tonight on Raw, while Smackdown Live will most likely finalize their last three teams tomorrow night.
Here’s a current recap of the teams already announced for next week’s WWE Mixed Match Challenge.