Jade Cargill was injured by a mystery assailant last month, putting the WWE women’s tag team championship in limbo. SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis was about to make the decision to vacate the titles last week when Naomi suddenly talked her way into replacing Jade as Bianca Belair’s new tag team partner. Aldis was open to the idea, but said that Belair and Naomi need to defend the belts tonight against Candice LeRae and WWE Women’s Champion Nia Jax.

Naomi’s convenient timing on saving Belair’s title reign seems awfully suspicious to me, and makes me think that she is in fact the mystery person who took out Jade. Naomi has been frustrated all year long by her inability to win championship gold in WWE. Now that she is in position to replace Jade as champion, it’s clear that nobody benefits more from Cargill’s injury than Naomi. That being said, Belair and Naomi have a tough task at hand tonight in defending the belts against Jax and LeRae. The ideal strategy is to get Jax out of the ring and focus on pinning LeRae. Candice has been trying to drive a wedge between Jax and Tiffany Stratton of late, so perhaps Tiffy Time will show up and “accidentally” ruin things for Candice during this match.

Braun Strowman returned from injury last week and transfer windowed his big ass over to the SmackDown roster, where he crushed Carmelo Hayes in a singles match. The Monster Among Monsters then accepted an invitation to appear on The Grayson Waller Effect tonight. The Motor City Machine Guns are pissed off about Johnny Gargano’s recent heel turn that cost them the WWE tag team titles. Alex Shelley now gets to take out his frustrations on Gargano in a singles match tonight. Alex vows to prove why he’s the teacher and Johnny is the student. That’s fine and all, but Chris Sabin better have a plan for neutralizing Tommaso Ciampa at ringside.