5 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown

2. Storytelling 101

Last night's SmackDown Tag Team Title bout between The Usos and the Chad Gable/Shelton Benjamin tandem came with great promise.

Jimmy and Jey were two of WWE's top performers in 2017, and their opponents have shown great cohesion and chemistry in recent weeks, having already emerged as one of the division's biggest highlights. This would've been an exciting bout if the teams were given 15 minutes to work their magic. Instead, we got roughly half that amount of time, which is disappointing, but the contest was still solid enough to compensate.

A 'mediocre' Usos match is still better than most, and the champs work extremely well with Benjamin and Gable, who improve every single week. They delivered some fast, fluid action with Jimmy and Jey emerging victorious in the end, but there was controversy. Gable and Benjamin technically defeated The Usos after a Doomsday Powerbomb on Jimmy, but the official ruled that Jey was the legal man, and they were forced to continue.

This was a smart move, as it establishes that Gable and Benjamin are capable of defeating the champions without needing to switch the titles. The Usos looked smart, too: they took a pinfall, but it was on the wrong guy, and they were successfully able to recover from the snafu and score the victory, thus continuing their reign.