5 Ups & 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Jan 30)

3. Fractured Friendships

While SmackDown's main event certainly wasn't great, the bout wasn't calibrated to deliver compelling action. Instead, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn vs. AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura was all about the storytelling. The point wasn't to blow the building's roof off, but to establish dissent between the heels, and it accomplished this.

The seeds were sown when Daniel Bryan announced the duo would face each other for a WWE Title shot next week. This resulted in a fractured tag performance that saw the duo argue multiple times, with Zayn walking out mid-match, before returning to the ring. Unwilling to tag his partner, Sami spent a prolonged period in the ring, before bailing once and for all, leaving Owens to his fate.

The babyfaces inevitably won, with KO attempting to take a powder after a series of Nakamura knee strikes, only for Styles to roll him back inside. A Kinshasa finished the job, and in a quick post-match interview, an agitated Zayn promised to defeat Owens next week, then go on to take AJ's title.

While it's disappointing that WWE are seemingly thinking about splitting the fantastic Zayn/Owens act so soon, this was well executed. Sure, it wasn't the spectacle one might expect from the talent involved, but it ticked the dramatic boxes it needed to, and gave the upcoming Sami vs. Kevin bout an extra layer of heat.