WWE Reveals a New Champion has Been Crowned at SmackDown Taping
WWE will be holding their next event, the Elimination Chamber, in Saudi Arabia next week, and because of that WWE taped next week's episode of SmackDown tonight in New Orleans. In a surprising move, WWE just spoiled one of the match results for that episode, revealing that they've crowned a new Intercontinental Champion. The match, which was promoted during tonight's episode was between current Champion Shinsuke Nakamura and Sami Zayn, and now WWE has revealed that Zayn defeated Nakamura to become the new Intercontinental Champion. No other details were given but social media will likely start to have some clips of the match sooner than later.
Perhaps WWE figured that because of the nature of taping matches a full week early that the result was bound to get out so why not announce it themselves. It actually makes sense to a degree, though it is still odd to see WWE or AEW acknowledge early results.
Rampage typically tapes ahead of time as does Impact Wrestling's episodes, which are typically done in batches, but more often than not spoilers are just ignored until it actually airs. In this case, WWE got ahead of things, and now Sami Zayn is the new Intercontinental Champion.
As for the reason for taping it so early, travel will be extensive in this case and since the event is on Saturday there would be no way to get SmackDown stars there in time if they didn't leave earlier.
Elimination Chamber includes some big matches, and you can find the full card below.
Men's WWE Championship Elimination Chamber Match: Bobby Lashley (C) vs Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Riddle, and Austin Theory
Universal Championship Match: Roman Reigns (C) vs Goldberg
Women's Elimination Chamber Match: Rhea Ripley vs Nikki A.S.H. vs Bianca Belair vs Doudrop vs Liv Morgan vs TBA
Raw Women's Championship Match: Becky Lynch (C) vs Lita
SmackDown Tag Team Championship Match: The Usos (C) vs The Viking Raiders
Drew McIntyre vs Madcap Moss
Elimination Chamber airs on February 19th at 12 PM EST on Peacock.
Are you happy Zayn is the new Intercontinental Champion? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!