This past Saturday, December 14th WWE put on their final TV Special/PLE for 2024 with the return of Saturday Night’s Main Event. WWE truly committed to the aesthetic of the event with the return of a more old school entrance way, alongside the Red, White & Blue ring ropes and the referees wearing a more old school attire to complete the presentation and make it seem you could have placed this event back in it’s original run and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The one downside of the event being as it was a TV special, many were taken off guard by the return of commercial breaks during a show that was not the weekly RAW/Smackdown.
Opening the show was Drew McIntyre vs Sami Zayn, Drew of course wanting to get some level of revenge/payback on Sami for his decision to go back to Roman Reigns & his Bloodline. And Drew succeeded at this, pinning Zayn for the victory and as he was leaving the arena/returning backstage he noted how he was “one down” and there were 4 to go. Seemingly indicating that Drew in the spirit of Christmas has a list that he’s checking twice to gradually go after all members of the OG Bloodline, which would leave Jey/Jimmy Uso, Solo Sikoa and of course, Roman Reigns.
Second, Liv Morgan defended her Women’s World Championship against Iyo Sky. Despite Iyo putting on a strong display, Liv Morgan won the bout, and actually won the bout with no interference from Dominik or any member of the Judgement Day which has not been the most common occurrence for her title defences. And after the match, keeping to her word from Raw, Rhea Ripley emerged to face of with Liv continuing their long established rivalry which would potentially carry on past the Heat Death of the Universe.
Thirdly, Gunther defended his World Heavyweight Championship against both Damien Priest & Finn Balor. In recent times, Gunther has been going through a mild identity crisis/questioning of confidence as he had/has been unable to be as dominant as he has been on record, both times against Damien Priest winning due to direct interference from Finn Balor. However this time, Gunther was finally able to defend his title without any sort of external interference and claim a definitive “clean” victory over Priest via pinning Balor and restoring any lost confidence of his position as the Ring General.
Following this, for the final of the Tournament to crown an inaugural Women’s United States Champion ended up pitting Chelsea Green against Michin. And in the end, despite all the odds Chelsea ended up getting the victory over Michin and writing herself into history as the first ever Women’s United States Champion, also as of writing simultaneously being both the longest & shortest reigning Women’s United States Champion.
And in the Main Event, Cody Rhodes defended his Undisputed WWE Championship, which for this night only instead if the usual belt was the returning ‘Winged Eagle’ design, as Cody had been gifted the belt by Triple H to use for this one night only to mark the occasion. Also for this match, Jesse Ventura returned to the Commentary Desk to commentate the match alongside Michael Cole & Pat McAfee who surprised fans with an early return in preparation for full time return when Raw goes to Netflix next year. This match saw 2 separate referees being taken out by mistake, one of these incidents directly costing Kevin Owens the match as he had Cody down for a 3 count but there was no referee to count it and in the time it took a second referee to arrive, Cody was able to kick out at the eventual 2. And unlike at Bad Blood, Kevin did commit to cheating to win, attempting to hit Cody with a Steel Chair while the second official was down. But this failed and in fact Cody ended up using the chair to his advantage landing a Cross-Rhodes onto the chair and getting the win that way, which despite it being Kevin introducing the chair, is still bending the rules slightly on Cody’s end.
And Owens was clearly frustrated with this, as after the show had gone off the air he assaulted Cody, even hitting a package piledriver on Cody, which of course is a banned move for the known neck issues they can and have caused in the past, before leaving with the Winged Eagle title. In fact, Kevin even got into a physical confrontation with Triple H after he’d come out to try and take the belt back from Owens. Showing just how far Kevin’s frustrations against Cody, Randy, The Bloodline have caused him to snap.
Saturday Night’s Main Event did its job of being a great return to form for the long standing TV special & sets up a decent pattern/expectation of what to expect in future for all further instances of this event. As we know of at least 3 more that will happen across the year thanks to Jesse Ventura mentioning his commentating on 4 of these events a year.
