{"id":159159,"date":"2026-04-17T21:56:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=159159"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:56:38","slug":"1-contender-for-womens-u-s-title-confirmed-on-wwe-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2026\/04\/17\/1-contender-for-womens-u-s-title-confirmed-on-wwe-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"#1 Contender for Women’s U.S. Title Confirmed on WWE SmackDown"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the April 17th, 2026 edition of WWE SmackDown<\/a>, two of the absolute best went at it with a number one contender’s slot for Giulia’s Women’s United States Championship on the line, as former WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton went head-to-head with the powerhouse Jordynne Grace. This first-time dream matchup ticked a ton of boxes, with two of the most dominating women in all of professional wrestling finally locking up.<\/p>\n

Jordynne Grace debuted on WWE SmackDown earlier this year, almost instantly finding herself in the WWE Women’s Title picture and nearly defeating Jade Cargill in her first months on the Blue brand. As for Tiffany Stratton, she got injured late last year, leading to her losing the WWE Women’s Title in devastating fashion. Fortunately, she bounced back and has been stringing up wins left and right since her return.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, Stratton has had major issues with the champion Giulia and her official representative, Kiana James, and this was primetime to finally get her hands on the “Beautiful Madness ” once and for all and get gold around her waist once again. Unfortunately for her, Jordynne Grace was on her A-Game tonight and was just hungry as she was, considering she has not won gold in WWE as of yet.<\/p>\n

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A WWE SmackDown graphic featuring former WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton (Photo Credit: WWE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Grace wasn’t called a “juggernaut” just for anything, showcasing her power on more than one occasion. However, Stratton was deceptively strong, fighting back at every turn. It all came to a head when Grace hit Tiffany with a Death Valley Driver, followed up by a Package Powerbomb, almost putting away the former world champion. Stratton would stumble but immediately got back into her offense, executing a picture-perfect Handspring Stunner.<\/p>\n

Stratton would execute a Firewoman’s Carry Front Slam, ending the match with a Prettiest Moonsault Ever. Tiffany Stratton is now the number one contender for the Women’s United States Title, and the champion Giulia and Kiana James were front row to see “Tiffy Time” dawn on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the April 17th, 2026 edition of WWE SmackDown, two of the absolute best went at it with a number one contender’s slot for Giulia’s Women’s United States Championship on the line, as former WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton went head-to-head with the powerhouse Jordynne Grace. This first-time dream matchup ticked a ton of boxes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3735,"featured_media":159161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,2192,26,4,3,320],"tags":[5900,2422,8618,9655],"class_list":["post-159159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-giulia","tag-jordynne-grace","tag-tiffany-stratton","tag-wwe-wrestlemania-42"],"modified_by":"Michael Joseph Sugue, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159159"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159164,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159159\/revisions\/159164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}