The WWE Superstars and Divas return to Corpus Christi for a night of body-slamming action, which also will be taped to air as a later televised Friday night SmackDown! The event will feature World Heavyweight Champion Randy Orton, Christian, Kane, Sin Cara, Daniel Bryan, Sheamus and Wade Barrett, as well as WWE Diva Layla.
“Everyone’s going to bring their A-game and put on a great show for the WWE Universe,” WWE Superstar Christian said. Friday Night SmackDown!, which is taped on Tuesdays, airs at 7 p.m. Fridays on the Syfy channel. Matches also will be taped for NXT and Superstars, two of WWE’s online shows.
WWE, which formerly stood for World Wrestling Entertainment, entertains more than 13 million people around the world with its weekly programming. Tuesday’s main event, which will follow the Friday Night SmackDown! taping, is scheduled to be a Triple Threat Match for the World Heavyweight Championship between Orton, Christian and Sheamus.
“The peeps always have supported me,” Christian said of his Corpus Christi fans. “Obviously, I would love to win the title there. We’ll see what happens when we get to Corpus Christi.”The past year has been strange for WWE’s “Captain Charisma,” he said.
Christian, who began his WWE career in the late ‘90s, returned to action in February after being out for six months with a torn pectoral muscle. He realigned himself with his longtime tag team partner and then-World Heavyweight Champion Adam “Edge” Copeland, who retired from competition last month due to symptoms of neurapraxia.
Christian won the vacated championship in a ladder match earlier this month at the “Extreme Rules” pay-per-view event. “There’s nothing like it,” Christian said of his first world title reign. “It’s something that when I started was my ultimate goal … What I wanted to be was a World Heavyweight Champion. Everyone takes different paths to get there. Mine took me 17 years.”
The reign was short-lived when he lost the title several days later to Orton, who was drafted from WWE’s Raw brand. “I got a taste of it,” Christian said, “and I look forward to being a two-time world champion.”