{"id":84022,"date":"2021-01-29T22:14:03","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T03:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=84022"},"modified":"2021-01-29T22:14:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T03:14:03","slug":"braun-strowman-returns-wwe-friday-night-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/01\/29\/braun-strowman-returns-wwe-friday-night-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Braun Strowman Returns on WWE Friday Night SmackDown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The main event of this week&#8217;s <strong>Friday Night SmackDown<\/strong> took on multiple forms. It began as a singles match between <strong>Daniel Bryan<\/strong> and <strong>Monday Night RAW<\/strong>&#8216;s own <strong>AJ Styles<\/strong>, the latter of whom christened himself as a <strong><em>Royal Rumble<\/em><\/strong> \u201cgatekeeper.\u201d Given that the likes of <strong>Ricochet<\/strong> and <strong>Drew Gulak<\/strong> failed to beat Styles for entry in the men&#8217;s Rumble, this moniker wasn&#8217;t totally unwarranted. In any event, Bryan and Styles faced one another in the main event. However, the match would take on multiple tag team formats following interference from various <strong>WWE<\/strong> Superstars. The night would end with \u201cThe Monster Among Men,\u201d <strong>Braun Strowman<\/strong>, making his first appearance on WWE programming since November.<\/p>\n<p>The main event of SmackDown took the final form of Bryan, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/04\/19\/before-they-were-famous-shinsuke-nakamura\/\" target=\"_self\">Shinsuke Nakamura<\/a><\/strong>, Intercontinental Champion <strong>Big E<\/strong>, <strong>Otis<\/strong>, and <strong>Sheamus<\/strong> taking on the team of Styles, <strong>Sami Zayn<\/strong>, <strong>Cesaro<\/strong>, <strong>John Morrison<\/strong> and Money in the Bank holder <strong>The Miz<\/strong>. The match ended when Sheamus hit Zayn with the Brogue Kick, getting the win for his team. Post-match, Sheamus was attacked by his opponents. Strowman made his entrance, mowing down Styles and Zayn before slamming Cesaro with authority. Strowman followed up by hitting his signature powerslam on Zayn before doing the same to Cesaro. In short order, \u201cThe Monster Among Men\u201d made his intention clear: he was determined to win the 2021 Men&#8217;s Royal Rumble.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A MONSTER is among us. @BraunStrowman is BACK! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SmackDown<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/g17YPryTbV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/g17YPryTbV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1355350534904012802?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 30, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Braun Strowman was last seen on the episode of Monday Night RAW following last year&#8217;s <strong><em>Survivor Series<\/em><\/strong> pay-per-view. At the event in question, Strowman was part of Team RAW, which ended up defeating Team SmackDown via clean sweep. The following night on RAW, an irate Strowman headbutted WWE Official <strong>Adam Pearce<\/strong> following conflict between the members of Team RAW. Taking offense to Pearce&#8217;s \u201clast but not least\u201d remark, Strowman struck the WWE Official, who suspended him indefinitely.<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.\u00a0WWE fan? You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Looking to talk wrestling, pro football, or any number of sports? Head on over to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/boards\/index.php\" target=\"_self\">LWOS Boards<\/a>\u00a0to engage in conversation with fellow fans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The main event of this week&#8217;s Friday Night SmackDown took on multiple forms. It began as a singles match between Daniel Bryan and Monday Night RAW&#8216;s own AJ Styles, the latter of whom christened himself as a Royal Rumble \u201cgatekeeper.\u201d Given that the likes of Ricochet and Drew Gulak failed to beat Styles for entry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":84024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_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":[12,2192,26,3],"tags":[255,5728,397,47],"class_list":["post-84022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe-universe","tag-braun-strowman","tag-friday-night-smackdown","tag-royal-rumble","tag-wwe"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84022","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\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}