King Corbin was accompanied last week on SmackDown by the returning Wesley Blake and Steve Cutler (the former Forgotten Sons). Originally this group started in NXT, and Blake and Cutler were the tag team accompanied by Jaxson Ryker. However, Ryker tweeted his support of Donald Trump for a political stance he took earlier this year, and he received some pushback from some members of the WWE locker room. The Forgotten Sons’ initial push to introduce them to the SmackDown audience was brought to a halt as a result, so WWE is in the process of starting over with the introductory push of Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake – and branding them as the backup to King Corbin in his rivalry with Murphy and the Mysterio family.
Ryker is still under contract with WWE for now, but he may or may not work more shows for WWE under that contract. It should be interesting to see the direction the company decides to take with Blake and Cutler, because they appeared to be headed for a SmackDown Tag Team Championship feud with The New Day. They were receiving a rather large push before they were taken off TV – they might have even become the team to take the titles off The New Day rather than Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura.
For the first time since wrapping up a singles feud with Sheamus on SmackDown a couple months ago, Big E participated in a singles match honoring the late Pat Patterson. He also debuted a brand-new entrance song (rapped by Wale) as well as the chalk he used during his pre-New Day stint as part of the five-count gimmick (which – one could probably imagine – is where he pins his opponents for a count of five instead of three). Speaking of this match to honor Pat Patterson, it was extremely poetic that all six men who participated in this match were former, or current, Intercontinental champions – Sami Zayn (current), Dolph Ziggler, Shinsuke Nakamura, Daniel Bryan, E, and Rey Mysterio – because Patterson was most famous for being the first ever Intercontinental Champion in 1979.