The 2026 King and Queen of the Ring tournaments have revealed an ugly truth about SmackDown: it’s the brand of peasants.
As of Monday, six wrestlers have advanced in this year’s tournaments, three men and three women — all from Raw. That includes Dominik Mysterio and Raquel Rodriguez, who each came to the blue brand last Friday and beat their Raw colleagues and SmackDown counterparts in respective Fatal 4-Ways.
Now, it’s up to Jade Cargill, Charlotte Flair, Royce Keys, and Raw transplant Finn Bálor
to keep this from being an all-red final at Night of Champions. But if current storylines are any indication, it appears only one of the ladies from SmackDown is bound to save the day.
This Friday, Flair, Cargill, Sol Ruca, and Lyra Valkyria will collide. Valkyria’s stock took a hit after she failed to win the Women’s Intercontinental title from Ruca on Monday. Of the four, she’s most likely to take the fall.
Ruca, less than two months into her main roster career, won the I.C. title on May 31 at Clash In Italy. Considering the prize for becoming Queen is a world title match at SummerSlam, it’s doubtful she’ll be in world title contention this soon.
Instead, the winner is looking like Flair or Cargill, whom WWE has tied to Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley.
As for the men, Keys and Bálor join Jey Uso and LA Knight in the other opening-round four-way. Keys is involved in a developing storyline with Solo Sikoa and the MFT, while Bálor was just traded to SmackDown on the June 1 episode of Raw.
That leaves Knight and Uso, who each stood out during a face-off on Monday that put the focus on their respective quests to become world champion.
SmackDown’s showing in the King and Queen of the Ring is symbolic of the brand’s current position within the WWE Universe. Despite big names like Cody Rhodes and breakout stars like Trick Williams, it comes across as WWE’s “B-show,” a reputation it has carried for years.
That remains true even after adding Bálor, Gunther, and Rhea Ripley from Raw within the last three months.
In May, a slew of releases by WWE gutted its men’s tag team division. Its champions are R-Truth, 54, and Damian Priest, a former world champion who has fallen so far out of contention that it’s easy to forget he was ever a world champion at all.
All told, SmackDown simply lacks the momentum right now to compete with Raw — in the ring and on-screen — a fact that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.
