WWE NXT Superstars Appearing At Friday's Double WWE UK Tapings?, Top Champions Not Advertised, More
WWE will tape this week's SmackDown episode and next Monday's RAW episode on Friday from the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. SmackDown, which airs later that Friday night on FOX, will likely tape first.
It will be interesting to see if WWE NXT Superstars appear at the UK RAW and SmackDown tapings to continue the build for WWE Survivor Series.
There are NXT live events scheduled for Thursday in Ocala, Friday in Tampa, and Saturday in Augustine. However, these are the regular NXT live events in Florida, which usually do not feature too many of the top Superstars. Furthermore, there are no NXT Road Trip live events scheduled for outside of Florida this weekend, which are the shows that include a card full of top NXT talents. This means that the top NXT Superstars involved in the Survivor Series build should be able to make the trip to the UK for the double RAW and SmackDown tapings, if WWE has plans for them.
The WWE website currently has NXT Superstar Finn Balor advertised for Friday's tapings, along with Roman Reigns, Kofi Kingston, WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura, SmackDown Women's Champion Bayley, Seth Rollins, WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Asuka and Kairi Sane, Braun Strowman, WWE United States Champion AJ Styles, and RAW Women's Champion Becky Lynch. In addition to these names, the Manchester Arena also has King Baron Corbin, The Miz, Alexa Bliss, Bobby Lashley, Cesaro, Natalya, Samoa Joe, The New Day, Rusev, Charlotte Flair, and Elias advertised. The arena also has Naomi and Lars Sullivan on the list, but they have been out of action and are likely listed for Friday due to a dated advertisement. For what it's worth, Naomi has been rumored to return this month.
It's interesting to note that WWE does not have WWE Universal Champion "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt or WWE Champion Brock Lesnar advertised for Friday's double tapings. This means that Wyatt might not make his first televised appearance as champion until the following Friday, which would be the November 15 episode from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA. WWE does not have Wyatt listed for any of the live events on the UK tour that kicks off this week.
It seems unlikely that RAW or SmackDown talents would appear on NXT TV this week as they will be traveling to Europe for the tour, although a few talents could stay back and fly out on Thursday.
The WWE website has the start time for the double tapings listed as 6pm local time, which would be 1pm ET. The arena notes that doors open at 4:30pm local time, with the 6pm start time. WWE will have just a few hours to edit SmackDown before it hits the air on FOX at 8pm ET.
Ticketmaster UK shows plenty of seats and VIP Packages listed for the double tapings on Friday.