WWE Makes Major Change to Tonight's SmackDown Women's Tag Team Title Tournament Match

08/19/2022 04:17 pm EDT

Tonight's WWE SmackDown has received a bit of a shakeup, as Shawn Michaels has revealed a new team will be stepping into tonight's Women's Tag Team Title Tournament match. The match was originally going to include Zoey Stark and Nikkita Lyons vs Natalya and Sonya Deville, but now that's changed, and stepping in for Stark and Lyons is none other than Toxic Attraction's Jacy Jayne and Gigi Dolin. The match will take place during SmackDown's 1200th episode, and you can check out the official announcement post below.

WWE posted a video of Michaels revealing the switch-up, and the kayfabe reason for it has to do with Stark's match against Toxic Attraction's Mandy Rose for the NXT Women's Championship at NXT Heatwave. During the match, Rose targeted Stark's previously injured knee, and then she ended the match by taking Stark's knee brace and attacking her with it.

Michaels explains that those actions resulted in Stark not being available for the match tonight, and as for Lyons, he said she was not medically cleared for this particular match. Earlier reports indicated that Lyons wasn't at SmackDown earlier in the day, so it seems there's no second twist coming there.

As for the real reason, this all happened, it was probably the plan the entire time. Many expected Toxic Attraction to be involved with the tournament and were quite surprised when they were excluded in favor of Stark and Lyons. Having Toxic Attraction not included got them a lot of support from fans on social media, and they are excited to see them finally involved.

Winning this match and moving on in the tournament would be an excellent way to build momentum for them if the plan is to move them to Raw or SmackDown soon, so the longer they get to be I involved the better. We'll have to wait and see what happens, but it all starts tonight.

What do you think of the change? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!

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