5 Ups & 1 Down From WWE Saturday Night's Main Event (24 January - Results & Review)

Styles, Nakamura make magic; Zayn plays hometown hero; Rhodes and Fatu run amok.

by Scott Carlson
WWE Saturday Night's Main Event AJ Styles Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE

Well, that certainly was a helluva show.

WWE delivered its best Saturday Night’s Main Event of this era this weekend, producing a four-match card that avoided the usual shortcut, cheap finishes that permeate these shows, even overdelivering after bailing out on one booked match.

Fans tuning in were treated to a blistering brawl to open the show that reignited interest in a rivalry that should have been dead and buried. Without spoiling anything, Jacob Fatu might be the secret sauce, that key ingredient that brings out the flavor.

Sami Zayn got his hometown hero’s welcome, and WWE didn’t squander it and kill the town (like they loved to do under Vince McMahon), with the Underdog from the Underground getting the win and punching his ticket to the Royal Rumble in an action-packed main event.

But the show-stealer had to be the last match added to the card. AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura locked it up one last time and made some magic. It was a different kind of match, which is to be expected considering where both men are at this stage in their careers, but they managed to turn back the clock a bit and wow fans, turning this SNME from solid to truly memorable.

Let’s get to it…

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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.