WWE news: SmackDown adds three matches to WrestleMania 36 card, but they'll likely be changed

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By Conor Porter

Published Mar 28, 2020

Friday Night SmackDown adds three matches to WrestleMania 36 card including two title matches

This week’s Friday Night SmackDown has added three new matches to the WrestleMania 36 card, two of which will be title matches.

Prior to this week’s SmackDown, 12 matches had officially been confirmed by WWE for WrestleMania 36, which will be aired over two nights on April 4 and April 5 from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando.

However, following Friday night’s blue brand show, three more matches have been added to this year’s Showcase of Immortals, including an Intercontinental Championship match.

Drew Gulak was able to defeat Shinsuke Nakamura on SmackDown this week, which means Daniel Bryan will now have a chance to win the Intercontinental title when he faces Sami Zayn at WrestleMania 36.

Also, since The New Day’s and The Usos’ match on the blue brand ended in a no-contest following an attack by The Miz and John Morrison, both of them will be added into a ladder match for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship at this year’s Showcase of Immortals.

Dolph Ziggler and Otis also furthered their love-triangle storyline with Mandy Rose during a backstage segment on this week’s SmackDown, and now the two will have a match at WrestleMania next weekend.

Although new matches have been added to WrestleMania, this episode of SmackDown was recorded almost a week ago, so it hasn’t taken into account the reports that have emerged over the past 24 hours of several WWE superstars pulling out of WrestleMania due to different reasons, but mainly to do with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Roman Reigns is the biggest name to pull out of this year’s WrestleMania since his past leukaemia makes him more vulnerable to the coronavirus, and Braun Strowman is expected to replace him in the Universal Championship match against Goldberg.

There have been reports as well that The Miz has been pulled from WrestleMania 36 after falling ill, and that the triple threat tag team match has now changed to Morrison vs one of The Usos in a singles ladder match.

The tag team match is expected to be changed next week on SmackDown, as well as the Universal title match, but more importantly, fingers crossed The Miz is okay.

WWE has continued their build towards WrestleMania this week on SmackDown, but as we’ve seen with superstars pulling out of the show over the past 24 hours, the card is forever changing.