WWE Smackville: Nakamura retains vs surprise challenger Ali

To kick off WWE Smackville, Shinsuke Nakamura retained his Intercontinental Championship in surprise challenger, Ali.

About a half hour prior to WWE Smackville going live on the air, WWE announced via its social media pages that Finn Balor has gone down with an undisclosed injury. There has been much speculation already as far as whether the injury is legit or not, but the fact of the matter is that Balor was declared not cleared to compete – in kayfabe at least – and, therefore, out of the match.

With that said, that did not mean that his Intercontinental Championship match was completely off, nor did it mean that Shinsuke Nakamura was exempt from defending the WWE Intercontinental Championship. In fact, the IC Champ came out at the very start of the show and demanded to receive a countout forfeit victory. The referee obliged and started to count Finn out. Obviously, Balor was nowhere near the arena, but you know who was? Ali.

Ali made his way to the ring in mid-count and understanding Balor’s plight of missing out on a big opportunity, calling back to when Ali missed his WWE Championship Elimination Chamber match back in February due to injury, Ali sought to capitalize on an opportunity by taking what would have been Finn’s opportunity tonight. Shinsuke Nakamura begrudgingly accepted and the match was on.

For about ten or so minutes, Ali and Nakamura skirmished and at the start, Naka got the larger bulk of offense over his challenger. That is, until Ali got into his comeback spot. That is when the match truly kicked into high gear. Ali built up a head of steam and following a super close near fall from a Satellite DDT, the IC Title looked to be in his grasp, but after tossing Ali face first into the middle turnbuckle, Naka capitalized with a Kinshasa for the win and retain.