WWE SmackDown Top 5 Segments: The Usos Still Have Teams On Lock

WWE Champion A.J. Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn

As expected, these four men produced a quality, albeit meaningless, tag team main event. Styles and Nakamura picked up the victory, but the focus was on the losing team, not the projected WrestleMania WWE Championship Match. Owens and Zayn continued to bicker throughout the match, culminating with Zayn abandoning his best friend and walking backstage. This was a shrewd move by WWE, as Zayn’s desertion advanced the angle while limiting Zayn’s bumps prior to his Mixed Match Challenge match.

WWE has plenty of time to arouse fans’ interest in Styles vs. Nakamura, so it didn’t bother me that WWE didn’t spotlight them further. This match was about furthering the Sami/Kevin storyline and WWE effectively foreshadowed a potential implosion between the two. I still doubt that it happens next week, but this match sowed some doubt in fans’ minds as to whether or not Owens and Zayn’s friendship was once again on the rocks.

Fans should expect the usual good work from Zayn and Owens next week–they could probably have a good match in their sleep–before they do whatever the planned finish is. Both men will probably fight for a while before they perform some farcical double-pin, leading to some sort of multi-person WWE Title match at Fastlane.

Uso’s Have the Tag Team Division “On Lock”

Jey and Jimmy Uso have always been great in the ring. Their clashes with the Wyatt Family and The New Day are proof of that. Over the past couple of years, however, they have turned a corner in the promo department. They were never terrible, they just came across as a little too milquetoast. That isn’t the case now.

After the brothers skunked Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin in their two-out-of-three falls match at the Royal Rumble, the Uso’s ran down all the teams that they have beaten over the years while proclaiming themselves as the best tag team in the world. That boast would have been laughable two years ago. Now it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

There was one thing I didn’t like about the segment: the prison cell doors. A graphics student using Adobe Premier for the first time could’ve created better-looking graphics than that. Plus, the execution was weird; WWE made it look like the Uso’s were the ones being locked up. To make matter worse, Jey was recently arrested for a DWI and the cell doors drew more attention to that. WWE should have avoided the graphics altogether.

Next: WWE SmackDown 5 Takeaways

Aside from that hiccup, the SmackDown Tag Team Champions cut a very good babyface promo. Their line about nobody being able to hang with them–not even “brothers”– seemed like a veiled shot at another sibling tandem that uses a million superkicks. Whether it was or not, it was an effective transition to the Bludgeon Brothers entrance. If their past work is any indication, this impending feud should be a lot of fun.