Spoilers for next week’s episode of SmackDown Live!

With next week’s episodes of RAW and SmackDown Live falling on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the WWE is doing something out of the norm by taping the episodes this weekend, as we saw last night with RAW in Detroit (find spoiler results here).

Tonight, SmackDown Live was taped at the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh and already announced in advance of the show is the return of John Cena to the blue brand. Here are the results from tonight’s taping:

• The show begins with The New Day’s New Year’s Celebration, leading to all three members announcing they will be in the Royal Rumble
• Samoa Joe defeated Jeff Hardy to earn a spot in a WWE Title #1 Contender’s Fatal 5-Way later tonight
• Backstage AJ Styles, Shane McMahon and Vince McMahon continue the story last week of Vince wanting to see the “real AJ Styles”
• United States Champion Rusev & Lana make their way to the ring to celebrate last week’s title win, but Shinsuke Nakamura ambushes Rusev from behind with Lana getting hurt during the fracas
• Sonya Deville defeated Naomi
• Backstage Randy Orton and Mustafa Ali discuss tonight’s Fatal 5-Way
• John Cena heads to the ring and issues an open challenge, but gets interrupted by Becky Lynch who tells him she’s “the man in WWE” and is taking his place. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas & Zelina Vega make their way out to cut them off and we have a match
• Becky Lynch & John Cena defeated Zelina Vega & Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas after Cena hit the AA on Almas, but got tossed out of the ring by Becky only for her to make Zelina tap
• Backstage Shane McMahon and The Miz are talking about their team attire with Miz wanting Shane to wear similar gear to him
• WWE Title #1 Contender’s Fatal 5-Way: AJ Styles defeated Mustafa Ali, Samoa Joe, Randy Orton & Rey Mysterio and will face Daniel Bryan for the WWE Title at Royal Rumble

Results c/o PWInsider