WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event Preview (Jan. 25, 2025): World Champion Jey Uso Is Now In Your City?

The second Saturday Night’s Main Event special of The Paul Levesque Era (and the 38th overall) goes down tonight live from the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas, and truth be told, it’s a slightly weaker card than last month’s event. Maybe scheduling it on the week before Royal Rumble wasn’t the best idea? No matter, let’s look ahead to what we’ll see at 8 ET/5 PT on NBC and Peacock.

World Champion Jey Uso Is Now In Your City?

There is no rest for The Ring General. After outlasting Damian Priest and Finn Balor in Long Island, Gunther will now make it back-to-back SNMEs when he defends his World Heavyweight Championship against ‘Main Event’ Jey Uso. The main selling point of this match is the history between these two men – Jey challenged Gunther for the Intercontinental title last year on Raw, but big brother Jim played timekeeper and costed him the match. 11 months on from that encounter, both competitors’ career trajectories have significantly changed, with the big Austrian bouncing back from his WrestleMania 40 loss to Sami Zayn (which in turn ended his record-breaking 666-day reign with the workhorse strap) by becoming Raw’s top dog at SummerSlam, while Jey took advantage of his wave of momentum and parlayed that into a brief stint as IC champ. But regardless of the ever-changing landscape of World Wrestling Entertainment, it was only a matter of time before they decided to run it back and finish what they started, and tonight they get to do just that.

This is actually Jey’s second attempt at grabbing the Big Gold Belt, having previously fallen to Priest this past May at Backlash France, but now he looks more determined than ever to finally fulfill his destiny and have a proper singles run after 15ish years of playing second/third-fiddle to the Samoan dynasty. Gunther may think of his opponent as nothing more than “a really good tag team wrestler”, but he better have eyes on the back of his head, because one small misstep could potentially lead to one of the biggest upsets in the history of this sport.

Will Gunther’s reign continue to march on, or will Uso YEET his way to the gold? Tune in tonight to find out!

Elsewhere On The Card…

• Speaking of history, the current Intercontinential Champion Bron Breakker and Sheamus will be going at it once more, with The Celtic Warrior looking to at long last capture the one title that has eluded him throughout his career. With the title becoming a bit of a hot potato ever since the two-night spectacular in Philadelphia, and with both men’s pedigrees in the business, this could definitely go either way.
• Braun Strowman will be taking on Jacob Fatu of The Bloodline (new faction name tba), and whatever the result is, The Monster Among Men and The Samoan Werewolf promise complete carnage in the ring.
• Having regained the title just two weeks ago on Raw’s Netflix premiere, new Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley isn’t wasting any time scheduling her first defense, and who better to face off with than former WWE Women’s Champ Nia Jax, who surely must be pissed that she lost her gold to a Tiffany Stratton cash-in on the first three-hour SmackDown. The Irresistable Force has some backup in Candice LeRae, so Rhea must surely be extra vigilant if she doesn’t want her latest reign to end quickly.
• Anddisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and Winged Eagle holder Kevin Owens will be initiating match III of their feud 7 days from now in Indianapolis, but first they must do a contract signing moderated by San Antonio’s own Shawn Michaels. Given Cody and KO’s ever escalating conflict with one another, this has the potential to transform into utter chaos (Also a good descriptor for every contract signing in rasslin’, come to think of it). And just what on Earth is that addendum SmackDown GM Nick Aldis promised to the world?
• Self-admitted racist Hulk Hogan was originally planned to appear tonight (perhaps to set up a confrontation with Jesse Ventura?), but it has now been nixed. I’m definitely sure it was a ‘family commitment’ and not the fact that the man is loathed by large swathes of wrestling fans for his revolting worldview…
• Will any more people on both the men’s and women’s rosters declare for their respective Rumbles? It could be yes, it could be no, it could be maybe, but at the very least Haitch should leave the door open for some fun surprises.

To Summarize…

Like I said, this SNME card pales in comparison to its Dec. ’24 counterpart partly because of its close proximity to the start of the Road To WrestleMania, but I’m willing to forgive Trips since all the match ups look good on paper. Will they translate to captivating entertainment on-screen for the two hours they’re alloted? We’ll see. Chime in the comments below if you feel the same or not. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you if you elect to skip it.