After the Royal Rumble, SmackDown has to resolve some ambiguities. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens will probably end their short partnership again.
After his victory at the Royal Rumble, Nakamura celebrated the start of the show in Philadelphia. But he was quickly interrupted by Owens and Zayn, who still felt cheated by the WWE championship. Defending champion AJ Styles came to the ring.
He spoke of looking forward to the match against Nakamura at Wrestlemania, but he also suggested joining the Japanese team against Zayn and Owens tonight. General Manager Daniel Bryan started the match. He also announced that Zayn and Owens would fight each other in the next issue. The winner gets another chance against Styles.
In a fatal 4-Way Rusev was able to assert himself and earned the status of No. 1 contender on the US title of Bobby Roode. After Big E, Xavier Woods and the two Singh brothers had interfered, they were expelled from the arena and Rusev could win a fair victory.
Shortly after the Usos had complained about lack of competition in the day team division, the Bludgeon Brothers destroyed two local challengers. Harper and Rowan were once again extremely dominant and could become rivals for the Usos in the future.
Charlotte Flair spoke briefly in the ring about the past Royal Rumble match when she was attacked by the Riott Squad. Ruby, Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan beat up The Queen and left her beaten in the ring. Carmella wanted to take her chance.
Misses Money in the Bank suddenly ran down the ramp and wanted to cash her suitcase to get a match against Charlotte immediately. However, the referee hesitated for a long time, which gave Charlotte the opportunity to avoid the first attack. In her place, Carmella met the referee. She took her suitcase and took flight.
At rumble Benjamin and Gable had to admit defeat, at Smackdown they were able to claim a small victory. Observed closely by The Ascension, the duo prevailed over Tyler Breeze and Fandango.
The visibly troubled duo from Canada finally had to give up styles and Nakamura. The two friends made their problems within the team clear several times and lost not least because of that. After Styles had pushed Owens into Zayn, he left the arena.
Backstage by Renee Young about the future of the duo, Zayn could not give a clear answer. For the time being, however, the YEP-movement seems to be in a big crisis. Owens couldn’t do much good on his own anyway.