5 Ups & 1 Down From WWE Saturday Night's Main Event (24 January - Results & Review)
1. A Late Addition Masterpiece
Heading into Friday night, Saturday Night’s Main Event consisted of three matches. WWE added a fourth during SmackDown, pitting AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura against each other. There were no titles on the line, no feud; just a respectful competition between two friends and former rivals as one of them enters his retirement year.
Styles and Nakamura are past their primes and on the downslope of their careers, so no one should have been expecting a blistering pace of heavy-handed offense. But what fans got was no less enthralling, with both men mixing in some throwbacks to their 2016 Wrestle Kingdom 10 classic. (Thankfully, they didn’t really reference their WrestleMania 34 disappointment.)
Their last-minute match started slowly and took a few minutes to really get going, but once it did, the match became almost hypnotic, with Styles targeting Nakamura’s knee with Dragon Screws and the Calf Crusher, and Shinsuke continuing to charge ahead with strikes and kicks. AJ hit his own Kinshasa after Nakamura’s knee gave out on his Kinshasa attempt, but Shinsuke would counter the Phenomenal Forearm with a Landslide for a close two count.
The finish built wonderfully, with both men countering each other’s finishers until Nakamura’s Kinshasa missed and he hit the turnbuckle, allowing AJ to put him away with a Phenomenal Forearm and Styles Clash. Afterward, the two shared a very familiar-looking fist bump and hugged, marking what is very likely the end of their rivalry.
Tremendous last-minute addition to the card that made the program. Maybe it’s the magic of being Styles’ retirement year – a cheat-code of sorts for making matches, doing callbacks, and drumming up interest – but once this got going, it clicked with the fans in attendance and those watching on television.