11 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2018

3. Anti-Climactic 2/3 Falls Match

Shelton Benjamin Usos
WWE.com

The SmackDown Tag Team Championship match looked like it was steaming ahead toward becoming a multi-snowflake affair, when fans suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them.

Shelton Benjamin & Chad Gable and the Usos threw everything at each other during the first fall, kicking out of finishers and other high-impact moves, only for Gable to finally fall to a series of superkicks. After all that, fans were looking forward to the next two falls and what could become an instant classic.

Instead, with Jimmy Uso beat up on the floor, Jey rolled Benjamin up about 30 seconds into the second fall for the win, giving the Usos the match in two straight falls. Just like that, Benjamin & Gable were knocked out of contention and right back down the ladder. This could have been a hard-fought, barely survive win that made the challengers look like a million bucks. What we got was something a lot different.

You’ve got to wonder if Gable forgot to shake someone’s hand backstage.

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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.