Penta was forced to retire from his match with Solo Sikoa this week after injuring his shoulder on live WWE TV, gifting the MFT star the win.
The popular luchador was fighting for the chance to face Gunther in the semi-finals of The Last Time is Now tournament where the winner faces John Cena in his last-ever match.
The idea of Gunther vs Penta led every reasonable fan to assume that would be the direction WWE was heading in, but it appears that was not the case.
Bryan Alvarez of F4WOnline.com reported that “Solo Sikoa was scheduled to beat Penta, so nothing changed in the tournament.”
Alvarez noted that the match had originally been planned to run about twelve minutes but was called off after four.
Barrett ushed WWE into a commercial break when Penta landed awkwardly during the match and the contest was waved off once we returned.
“I actually found out that he [Penta] was not going to win. Solo was going to win, and they were going to do Gunther and Solo. I thought when that happened, I go, ‘Oh my god,’ because I was sure Penta was going to win the match,” said Alvarez.
Penta has been on a hot streak since joining WWE and the company has thus far resisted the temptation to pair up the Lucha Bros with his real-life brother Rey Fenix working on SmackDown.
Sikoa, also on SmackDown, has been treading water a bit with his group. He was red-hot as the little-spoken enforcer of the original Bloodline collective, but now that he’s leading his own tribe, he’s drifted away from the main events.
A United States title win this year is the pick of his accomplishments, but now he faces Gunther next week for a spot in the final of the tournament with LA Knight, Jey Uso and Rusev still on the other side of the brackets.
At the risk of making the same mistake we did with Penta vs Sikoa, one would assume Gunther is going to march pass the Samoan in the next round.
The former world champion has been widely tipped to be the man that is going to regtire John Cena on December 13, just like he did Bill Goldberg earlier this year.
