After Sami Zayn's big win in Montreal, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 1/24/26 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event!
Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s semi-regular review of WWE Saturday Night's Main Event — in this case, the 43rd one and the one where Sami Zayn came to Montreal and won the right to a world title match in Riyadh! And that's not all; we also had AJ Styles beating Shinsuke Nakamura, Rhiyo notching their first-ever women's tag title defense, and Cody Rhodes brawling with Jacob Fatu until a wild Drew McIntyre appeared! And yes, we will talk about all those things here in the column!
If you missed the show, be sure to check out our SNME results page, especially if you like your results to be objective, just-the-facts type deals. We'll run the entire gamut here as well, but in this case, the results will be colored by the opinions and analysis of the WINC staff. So if you're down with all that, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 1/24/26 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event!
Read more: How Did Cody's 'The List' Pan Out For Everyone Else?
Hated: Fatu, Rhodes missing stipulation from the beginning
While the Cody Rhodes vs. Jacob Fatu brawl kicked off Saturday Night's Main Event in a big way, I couldn't help feeling cheated out of a match. Though, with how much I've disliked this feud from the beginning when both men looked dumb just letting Drew McIntyre crawl out of the cage during the Three Stage of Hell match, I should have expected something like this.
If I was in the crowd in Montreal tonight, I probably would have been pretty upset that I didn't get to see a match between these two men. Technically, SNME only had three matches tonight, and I probably would have felt some kind of way about that had I spent all that money for a ticket. I was still pretty annoyed sitting here at home, because honestly, this match should have had a stipulation from the beginning, especially after what we saw on "SmackDown" last night.
Last night, Rhodes went as far as to bring up Fatu's very real jail time, which I mentioned yesterday I thought was odd with Rhodes as a babyface. When the men were kept apart by officials at the end of the segment, or even when Michael Cole announced on commentary that they were banned from the building for the rest of the show, that's when a no disqualification stipulation should have been tacked on. Last week, they also had to be pulled apart by officials, so General Manager Nick Aldis should have stepped in to do something and gave them an outlet to take their aggression out on one another legally.
After tonight, it looks like Fatu and Rhodes are headed toward a street fight. They battled through the crowd in the arena, throwing drinks, trash cans, and other stuff at each other, and even battled in the concession area. While maybe "street fight" wasn't the clear stipulation after yesterday, a no DQ match certainly could have been, which could have easily moved into this kind of fight. Instead, we didn't get an official match, as it seems like WWE didn't want to book either man to lose. And, now with the Royal Rumble next week, we likely won't see this official street fight for a few weeks now.
While I didn't expect this feud to wrap up tonight or anything, the way WWE went about this was kind of odd. I don't think the match should have been booked for SNME at all if it was just going to break down like this. The rest of the show was pretty darn solid, so this really stuck out to me as a blunder in terms of booking for an already confusing feud.
Written by Daisy Ruth
Loved: Rhiyo and Judgment Day steal the show
Given how much I've grown fond of them over the past several weeks, I am pretty much bound to love everything that Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY take part in. For that reason, it's not really surprising that one of my favourite things that happened on this show was their Women's Tag Team Championship Match pitting them against Judgment Day's Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez.
All four women who took part in this match have endless amounts of talent, so it's not surprising that they put on a fantastic contest. I know there were definitely a few bumps in the road during this match (namely Ripley being late to break up a fall when Perez had pinned SKY), but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who's willing to overlook those mistakes for something that was so fun and entertaining to watch. From top to bottom, it was fast paced, kept the action up throughout the entire contest, had a great format, and some good in-ring psychology at play. I also appreciate the fact that this was one of the things featured on this show that relied more on the storyline aspect of things instead of just being a good match that wasn't anything more than just that due to limited storytelling.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
Hated: Overcrowding in the tag title match
Rhea Ripley and Iyo Sky defended their Women's Tag titles for the first time at Saturday Night's Main Event, facing Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez. That's good. Morgan has only recently returned and is a forever-rival to Ripley, plus she never actually lost the Tag titles due to her injury and was teaming with the woman that had, for all intents and purposes, replaced her and eventually lost the Tag titles herself.
Plus, her usual partner, Raquel Rodriguez, was preoccupied by the Women's World title on the shoulders of Stephanie Vaquer. This is all going good so far. The Tag titles are starting to feel like their own thing and we seem to be getting an absolutely stellar match between four of the best wrestlers in the company. Ripley and Sky retained the titles after an absolutely stellar match to cement themselves as champion.
But...
Was it clean? Of course not, we're watching WWE. Where nothing can be simple, no match can be free of interference, and everything must absolutely be another piece in a long and very convoluted puzzle. A puzzle which when completed reveals a mirror, reflecting the absolute dumba** that expected anything of significance. It is the Dragon Scroll from Kung Fu Panda. It's an omission of significance dressed up in a collective blind faith that something, anything, will happen if we just give it enough time.
Rodriguez got involved in the match because of course she did, doing what really should have cost Ripley and Sky the titles. But because this is Saturday Night's Main Event and WrestleMania is literally around the corner, there was never going to be a title change here. Thus, Vaquer came out to fight Rodriguez off and the champions retained. The match didn't need any interference, it did very little to actually enhance it, and once again overcrowded yet another segment.
It is a very little thing to complain about on the face of it, considering by my own admission the match itself was really good and the result was the right one. But at the same time, it's the latest in a very, very long line of formulaic interference bait and switches, and it leaves me, as a viewer, feeling like a college professor who can see AI was used to write this paper.
Written by Max Everett
Loved: AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura run it back
It was 10 years ago that AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura met one-on-one for the first time at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom, and although none of their matches in WWE have even threatened to live up to that maiden contest, it was more than a welcome announcement that they would run things back, presumably for the last time, at Saturday Night's Main Event.
Once more, it was nowhere near the level of their first match and was never going to be, all things considered. But it was a clear homage to the story between them over the years, one of a respect hard earned in multiple promotions and continents, and one of knowing this will likely be the last time they share the ring. It never descended into a finisher-fest, rather succeeding in being a very grounded contest between two competitors looking to win the fight. Nakamura sought for his killshot several times throughout the affair, but the closest he came to a clean Kinshasa didn't pay off because of the damage done to his knee beforehand; Styles had been working it over before cinching in the Calf Crusher.
Much in the same way, Styles tried to get either the Styles Clash or the Phenomenal Forearm off at times. But the story was that these men knew each other so well, they were aware of when they were in the proverbial danger zone. Ultimately that had to be untrue for one of them, and Nakamura took both the Phenomenal Forearm and the Styles Clash to finally be kept down.
Styles will now go into next weekend with his WWE career on the line against Gunther, and regardless of that outcome there will likely no be another opportunity for Styles and Nakamura to face one another. Regardless of whether it was the best of their matches or not, in the present moment it was one to be enjoyed, and did very well to play the greatest hits without feeling over-indulgent – or downright bad, because that is always a possibility.
Whether it comes to an end next weekend or not, Styles is winding down his career and this writer would argue that to be on par with John Cena's retirement. One of the greatest wrestlers of all time with the distinction of being the best in every promotion he touched down in, a rare outsider "Indie Darling" who won the WWE title and entered WrestleMania with it. That's coming to an end, and any chance to see the "Phenomenal One" doing what he does best is going to be a Loved from me.
Written by Max Everett
Hated: Priest eats the pin
This is a minor complaint — SNME was overall a pretty damn good show, so minor complaints are all I have — but I was surprised and a little disappointed to see Damian Priest take the pin in the four-way main event. Nothing against Trick Williams, but I thought he was the obvious choice. Not only is he the new guy in the match, but both Priest and Randy Orton are former world champions, and while Randy was obviously never going to be pinned here, you'd think WWE would be a little more into protecting Damian coming off his feud-ender with Aleister Black. Priest is a guy who's lost pretty much all his momentum since his world title run and it seemed clear to me that taking the fall would hurt him, whereas the brash, cocky call-up Williams really didn't need to be protected at all.
Beyond that, it felt better for the story of the match. Williams has consistently been in Zayn's face since coming up to the main roster; it's not a coincidence that he and Sami immediately went nose to nose when this match began. It's possible they still get to settle things in a singles match, but now that Sami is the No. 1 contender for the WWE Championship, that seems slightly less likely. Having Zayn pin Williams here would have gone a long way toward resolving their issues, and would have provided a more satisfactory beat on which to end the contest.
As I said, minor complaint— the important thing to me is that Sami got the win. But I did think Williams, not Priest, should have eaten the pin.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
Loved: Four-way match, Zayn victory give SNME meaning
I've said it before and I'll likely say it until WWE's Saturday Night's Main Event deal with Peacock is up and there are no more specials, but this show rarely has any meaning, John Cena's final match in December and CM Punk and Jade Cargill wining their titles in November not withstanding. Okay, I'll admit, WWE had a good two-month run with SNME last year, but to be honest, I didn't have any big expectations going into this show right before the Royal Rumble. Thankfully, when this four-way match was announced, it gave me some hope the show would have some life, and the main event match absolutely delivered tonight.
Of course, I love it because Sami Zayn absolutely deserves to challenge Drew McIntyre for the Undisputed WWE Championship. Rather, Zayn deserves to win that championship, though whether that happens at the Royal Rumble next weekend or WrestleMania or somewhere else in the near future is certainly up for debate. While Zayn did have an impressive showing in tonight's match, there were so many points where I wasn't certain that was going to happen. Trick Williams, who has a rivalry with Zayn going right now that I love, Damian Priest, and the veteran Randy Orton all had solid spots where, if I wasn't watching the clock, I would have thought the match was over.
Maybe that's all on me for watching the clock, but there were quite a few exciting spots and the match was wrestled at just the right pace for me. At one point, Zayn had the match won with a Helluva Kick on Priest, but Williams pulled the referee out of the ring. In another, Zayn dodged an RKO, but walked right into another from out of nowhere while looking for the Helluva Kick. In the end, it was Zayn to take a Razor's Edge, but have enough in him to regain momentum quickly and take Priest out while he was distracted with Williams. Even then, Orton was so close to breaking up the final pin.
I loved all points where Zayn and Orton went one-on-one, and now I need the title on Zayn for him to have an extended rivalry with a heel Orton. I'm really looking forward to Zayn's match against McIntyre next weekend, and I truly think he could pull it off in Saudi Arabia. That, or, he'll have a second chance to get back into the title picture with a Rumble match victory. It's an exciting time of the year to be a wrestling fan, and it's nice to have Zayn in a top spot to be rooting for right now.
Written by Daisy Ruth
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Category: General Sports
