11 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2018

10. AJ Pulls A Rabbit

AJ Styles Sami Zayn
WWE.com

It’s doubtful anyone was seriously buying Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens toppling AJ Styles for the WWE Championship – not because they aren’t worthy, but because Styles has been on an incredible roll and seemed on course for WrestleMania.

But beating two top superstars and making it look like you escaped can be tricky, and that’s exactly what AJ did. Styles had to deal with KO and Zayn tagging in and out frequently, often after the champ landed a couple moves. One of the best moments early on came when AJ blocked Owens from his corner, so he rolled outside, ran around the ring and dove back in by his corner and tagged Sami.

AJ managed to inflict enough damage on both (and took a bunch of punishment too) that he really capitalized on tossing Sami and reversed a Pop-Up Powerbomb into a rollup for the win.

Meanwhile, the two Canadians have a grip about a phantom tag the ref saw, so their battles with Shane McMahon will presumably continue.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.