Jacob Fatu gets pulled from SmackDown main event and is replaced by insane Cody Rhodes

WWE was still advertising Jacob Fatu vs. Drew McIntyre for tonight’s (Oct. 17) episode of SmackDown despite this week’s report that Fatu will miss an extended period of time due to injury. A lot of fans have been curious to see how would this situation would be handled on the show.

General Manager Nick Aldis kicked off SmackDown in the ring by announcing that Fatu vs. McIntyre is now a number one contender’s match to see who gets to challenge WWE Champion Cody Rhodes at Saturday Night’s Main Event on November 1.

Fatu appeared in a backstage segment with Rhodes later in the show and got the hometown pop in San Jose. But when it came time for the main event entrances, Fatu was nowhere to be seen. We quickly found out that he was attacked backstage and bleeding from the mouth, but it wasn’t clear who did it. The commentators wondered if his teeth were knocked out.

McIntyre came out to make fun of Jacob and demand the referee raise his hand as the new number one contender. Aldis was about to threaten McIntyre with some kind of disciplinary action if he finds out he’s the one who attacked Fatu, but Drew immediately denied that he had anything to do with it.

Rhodes wasn’t having it. He burst onto the scene enraged and demanded a match with McIntyre on the spot even though he wasn’t in his ring gear. The two men brawled in a wild scene before the bell rang to officially begin the match. It was chaos as the commentators didn’t even know if the WWE championship was on the line.

It ultimately didn’t matter if the title was on the line, because the referee threw out the match after Rhodes blasted Drew in the head with the belt. Rhodes wouldn’t calm down. WWE officials stopped him from dropping McIntyre through a table with Cross Rhodes, but they couldn’t stop Cody from diving onto a pile of bodies to send Drew packing.

It sure looks to me like this angle was done to whet the appetite for more Rhodes vs. McIntyre at Saturday Night’s Main Event, in addition to writing off Fatu.

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