Welcome to Bleacher Report's live cover of the first SmackDown of 2025 on January 3.

The new year started off with some title action as Nia Jax defended her WWE Women's Championship against Naomi.

United States champion Shinsuke Nakamura was also in action against Andrade, but their encounter was a non-title bout.

With about a month to go before the Royal Rumble, WWE has a lot of time to fill, especially to build up a card that will mainly be comprised of the two Rumble matches. This week's show gave us a couple of hints about what we might see at the PLE.

Let's take a look at everything that happened on Friday's episode of SmackDown.

Cody Rhodes Opens 2025

After a video recapped what happened last week between Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens, The American Nightmare came out to open the show.

He revealed he is not cleared to wrestle yet and blamed the piledriver he received from KO. Surprisingly, it wasn't Owens who came out to confront him. It was Drew McIntyre. However, he did not attack Rhodes. He gave him a hug that seemed to catch the champ off guard.

The Scottish Warrior told Rhodes he needed a friend, but Cody didn't seem to care. Owens ended up attacking Rhodes from behind and they brawled until officials and security broke them up.

As opening segments go, this was decent but nothing we haven't seen before. Rhodes talked for a while, his feud was addressed, and Owens threw a few shots. It was business as usual. Rhodes is good at carrying a segment like this but he didn't have a lot to do here because their match is still a month away. All they could do was fill some time.

Grade: B-

Notable Moments and Observations

• McIntyre got a nice pop. You could tell the crowd was surprised to see him. 
• Opening with a talking segment is fine, but it feels like this one took up twice as much time as it needed. 

Andrade vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Fresh off an appearance at Pro Wrestling NOAH a couple of days ago, Nakamura was back in a WWE ring to take on Andrade in a non-title match.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, these two put on a great show. Andrade and Nakamura know each other well and have been able to give us great performances every time they have crossed paths for years.

Andrade looked more focused than he has in quite some time, but Nakamura is in his Sith era. Defeating him when he is willing to cheat so easily is supposed to be a challenge, and he did a great job making it look that way.

After hitting his head on the ring post, Andrade fell to Nakamura's Kinshasa to give the champion a win, but his celebration was cut short by LA Knight appearing to attack him.

Result: Nakamura defeated Andrade

Grade: B+

Notable Moments and Observations

• Nakamura's new theme is so simple and so effective. It's a great remix of his old song. 
• It was surprising to see a blue mat instead of the usual white mat. The PRIME logo was also missing. 
• The sound when Andrade hit the ring post was nuts. 
• Pretty Deadly and Legado Del Fantasma got into a fight backstage after this match. 

Michin vs. Piper Niven

After failing to capture the U.S. title, Michin wanted a measure of retribution against Chelsea Green's best friend, Piper Niven.

This match played out as expected. Michin used her ability to keep the powerhouse on her toes while Niven used her size and strength to push her opponent around whenever she could.

Green was playing cheerleader at ringside as she watched Niven and got incredibly upset when Michin began twerking at her.

Michin was able to overcome Niven to get the win in a decent bout. Michin is one of WWE's most underrated performers and it's been great to see her get more ring time in recent months.

Result: Michin defeated Niven

Grade: B-

Notable Moments and Observations

• Niven has her own music but came out to Chelsea's music for some reason. 
• Green was decked out in American patriotic clothing, which is always funny to see on a Canadian. 
• The back-to-back cannonball spot was fun. 

DIY vs. Motor City Machine Guns

Paul Heyman came out to speak about Roman Reigns vs. Solo Sikoa on Raw next week. Before he could leave, Solo Sikoa came out. Surprisingly, he suggested Heyman hold the ulafala during his match with Reigns to protect it.

The next match saw Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano defend the tag titles against Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley, who lost the titles to DIY a few weeks ago.

Sabin and Ciampa had a nice exchange of counters and takedowns to get the match started. Once DIY took control, they kept Sabin isolated for a long time with quick tags and double-team moves.

Shelley got a hot tag and went right for his former protege. He almost had Gargano pinned to regain the titles with a nice neckbreaker.

These are two teams who know how to put on an exciting match, so they had the crowd chanting "This is awesome" without even breaking much of a sweat.

Pretty Deadly showed up and distracted MCMG so DIY could regain the upper hand. Angel and Berto chased Pretty Deadly around until their fight spread into the ring and caused the ref to throw out the match.

This finish protects DIY and MCMG while setting up for another rematch in the future, but not having a clear winner is always going to be a little disappointing.

Result: No Contest

Grade: B+

Notable Moments and Observations

• WWE aired a special video for Naomi that was put together well. 
• Gargano looking around as if there was a helicopter in the arena was hilarious. 
• Graves had a rare misstep when he called a slingshot crossbody a suicide dive. 

Naomi vs. Nia Jax, Tiffany Stratton vs. Nia Jax

Bianca Belair accompanied Naomi to the ring for her title match against Jax, who had Candice LeRae by her side. Tiffany Stratten was nowhere to be seen, which immediately made fans suspicious of a potential cash-in.

Naomi used her speed to take control as soon as the match started, but she could only go for so long before Jax's power was too much for her.

The champion had Naomi reeling during and after the commercial break. Belair watched with worry in her eyes as her tag partner had her head smashed against the ring post.

This went from being a pretty down-the-middle match to being a fun bout that had the crowd invested. Naomi and Jax worked hard to make this a physical encounter that made both of them look like tough competitors.

Belair and LeRae got into a fight at ringside that was broken up by Jax. This gave Naomi a moment to recover, but then Tiffy's music hit and she ran to the ring with a second ref, but at the last second, she threw the ref over the barricade and then blasted Naomi with the briefcase while the ref was looking away.

Jax pinned Naomi to retain her title and Tiffany got in the ring to celebrate with her. Suddenly, she attacked Jax and LeRae before allowing Belair to hit Jax with a KOD. Miss MITB threw Belair out of the ring and over the announce table before officially cashing in.

She hit her trademark moonsault and pinned Jax to become the new WWE women's champion.

Result: Jax defeated Naomi, and then Stratton defeated Jax to win the title

Grade: B+

Notable Moments and Observations

• LeRae is one of those people who seems like a natural babyface, but WWE seems to like her more as a heel for some reason. 
• Naomi continues to have the most consistently cool gear in WWE. 
• Naomi's jumping enziguiri looked good, but the Samoan drop she hit was the most impressive spot she hit. 

The New Bloodline vs. OG Bloodline

This week's main event was a six-man tag match with Sami Zayn and The Usos taking on Solo Sikoa, Jacob Fatu and Tama Tonga.

All six men started brawling as soon as the ref called for the bell. The ref just sort of sat back because there was nothing he could do to stop it. The show went to a break with the new Bloodline being tossed out of the ring.

Once we returned from a break and order was restored, Jey and Tama squared off as the legal men. The pace slowed way down once Solo's team had the upper hand.

This match was given a lot of time, and while that would usually be a good thing with talented competitors like this, it sometimes felt as if they were struggling to fill time. The number of commercial breaks being higher than usual certainly didn't help the pacing.

Most of the action we saw was well-executed, but it really started to drag on after a little while. Part of the problem might be that we have seen all of these men fight so many times at this point.

Solo ended up getting the win for his team with a Samoan Spike to Jey. This was fine for what it was, but having the women's title bout as the main event would have been a better ending to the show.

Result: The New Bloodline defeated The OG Bloodline

Grade: B

Notable Moments and Observations

• Fatu is lowkey the funniest man in WWE. His pre-match speech was hilarious in ways nobody intended it to be. 
• The entrances and a commercial break took almost 10 minutes, and then the next break was only a couple of minutes later. 
• Corey Graves made a good point about Sikoa being a more active leader than Reigns and not just expecting everyone to do his bidding. 

The Final Word

The first SmackDown of the year was also the first three-hour episode to air, and it's safe to say WWE is not using all that time as effectively as it could.

The show only featured five matches, and one of them felt like it lasted a lot longer than it needed to, so the number of commercials in it felt lopsided.

On the plus side, most of what we saw tonight was solid in-ring work. Andrade and Nakamura always work well together, the tag title bout was fun, and Naomi and Jax put on a great performance.

However, Stratton finally cashing in to win the briefcase was the best moment of the night. The crowd erupted in applause as she turned on the champion and redeemed her title shot. Tiffy Time is here and it's not going anywhere.

If WWE wants to have both Raw and SmackDown running around three hours, then it's going to need to find more ways to fill that time.

Grade: B