{"id":96224,"date":"2021-07-16T20:42:48","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T00:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=96224"},"modified":"2021-07-16T20:42:48","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T00:42:48","slug":"finn-balor-returns-on-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/07\/16\/finn-balor-returns-on-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Finn B\u00e1lor Returns on SmackDown, Interrupts Sami Zayn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s edition of <strong>Friday Night SmackDown<\/strong> was poised to be one of the most important episodes to date. <strong>World Wrestling Entertainment<\/strong>&#8216;s Friday night show marked the return of a live TV audience, following months of empty arena shows and events held within the confines of the ThunderDome. It was fair to expect that WWE would have a few tricks up its sleeve to catch the fans in attendance, as well as those watching from home, by surprise. Enter <strong>Finn B\u00e1lor<\/strong>, who made his main roster return, making a statement by interrupting <strong>Sami Zayn<\/strong> and his crusade for &#8220;justice,&#8221; Zayn believing he was purposely excluded from the Men&#8217;s Money in the Bank ladder match.<\/p>\n<p>In full ring gear, Finn B\u00e1lor confronted Sami Zayn in the center of the ring. Zayn attempted to attack\u00a0B\u00e1lor, only for &#8220;The Prince&#8221; to quickly retaliate. B\u00e1lor followed up with the Coup de Gr\u00e2ce, leaving Zayn writhing in the center of the ring. In only a few moments, the 2x <strong>NXT<\/strong> Champion made a statement in front of the capacity crowd.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">THIS IS HAPPENING!<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FinnBalor?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@FinnBalor<\/a> is BACK on <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\/wzdshGreHu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/wzdshGreHu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1416196014118211588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 17, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Tonight&#8217;s SmackDown marks the first main roster appearance of Finn B\u00e1lor since <strong><em>SummerSlam 2019<\/em><\/strong>, where he lost to <strong>&#8220;The Fiend&#8221; Bray Wyatt<\/strong> in the latter character&#8217;s first match. He would return to his old stomping grounds, NXT, the following October. From there, he adopted a more villainous persona as &#8220;The Prince,&#8221; picking up victories over the likes of <strong>Tommaso Ciampa<\/strong> and <strong>Riddle<\/strong>. This past September, at the NXT Super Tuesday event, B\u00e1lor bested <strong>Adam Cole<\/strong> for the vacant NXT Championship, beginning his second reign with the title in question. B\u00e1lor successfully defended it against Cole, <strong>Kyle O&#8217;Reilly,<\/strong> and <strong>Pete Dunne<\/strong> before <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/04\/08\/karrion-kross-reclaims-nxt-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">losing the title to <strong>Karrion Kross<\/strong><\/a> at <strong>NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver<\/strong>\u00a0this past April.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for 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. 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>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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> to engage in conversation with fellow fans!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s edition of Friday Night SmackDown was poised to be one of the most important episodes to date. World Wrestling Entertainment&#8216;s Friday night show marked the return of a live TV audience, following months of empty arena shows and events held within the confines of the ThunderDome. It was fair to expect that WWE [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":96225,"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":[111,106],"class_list":["post-96224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe-universe","tag-finn-balor","tag-sami-zayn"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96224","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=96224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}