WWE Smackdown Live: The 10 for February 12, 2019

9. Gauntlet, part the fifth and final

With literal moments until SmackDown heads off the air, it was safe to assume that the gauntlet match’s final bout wasn’t going to take up much time. Styles, having vanquished Kingston, stands in the ring awaiting the final opponent, Randy Orton. Orton’s music hits and Styles’ eyes stay, noticeably, on the entrance ramp.

Of course, it’s not hard to see where this is going, with Orton coming from behind and felling Styles with an RKO (out of nowhere, natch). Orton defeats Styles and he will now be the final competitor to go from pod-to-Chamber in Sunday’s WWE Championship match.

While disappointing to see the WWE make the decision to have Kingston be just shy of the gauntlet win, not much about the outcomes of these series of matches matter beyond Orton’s advantage. Though Bryan was eliminated first, that won’t result in him entering the Chamber first, and other competitors’ pods will be opened in a random order, save for Orton’s. Importantly,  no one comes out of the night looking bad, though Kingston certainly came out looking the best.

But the other message sent by this match is that sometimes, the wrestling still does matter to the WWE. There are times when it feels like it doesn’t, and then there are times like Tuesday night, when wrestling takes up a full hour of a two-hour show (and a good chunk of the first hour, as well). The times when WWE is more “WWe” and less “WwE,” it helps make the shows and characters better and more well-rounded. And when the “W” and the “E” matter equally and to each other? Well, that’s why the company has that first “W” in its name.