Like Homer’s Odysseus, or Dick Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie, WWE returned home on Saturday, bringing Saturday Night’s Main Event to Madison Square Garden. The show saw new tag team champions in the women’s division, as well as a celebration of the NBA Champion New York Knicks. You can read all about it on the Saturday Night’s Main Event 7/18/2026 Results Page, and you can read the staff’s thoughts about the wrestling, or lack thereof, over on the Saturday Night’s Main Event Hated and Loved column.
So let’s get into the winners, and let’s get into the losers. I never like these to be literal. Winners can be losers, like Roman Reigns, who stood tall at the end of the night in a kinda empty main event segment, losers can be winners, and innocent bystanders can catch strays. The only rule is there are no rules.
So enough of my introductions, let’s get into the Saturday Night’s Main Event Winners and Losers.
Winners: Fatal Influence
I know I said I don’t like these to be so literal, but Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid pinned one WWE Hall of Famer and another woman who has been practicing her Hall of Fame speech since she returned to the company. Sometimes things are exactly the way they appear, and Fatal Influence were clear winners on Saturday.
As someone who has been in charge of the weekly NXT beat for God-knows-how-long, it’s heartening to see Fatal Influence’s success on the main roster. The group was a clear favorite of management and the Performance Center crowd during their time in NXT, but that doesn’t always translate on the main roster. The hard-hitting match with Brie Bella and Paige put any concerns to bed.
The group is heading into SummerSlam as the team to beat in the women’s division, likely meaning a confrontation in the future with Brie Bella and her recovering sister, Nikki. It’s a very good time to be Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid, and hopeful that success will trickle down to Jacy Jayne at some point, especially after her substantial run as NXT Women’s Champion.
Loser: Stephanie McMahon
Stephanie McMahon looked completely lost on Saturday. She was brought out to be a broadcaster during the show’s pre-show, and to also interview King of The Ring Oba Femi, but it felt like WWE wasn’t interested in using any variation of her on-screen character, instead using her like they would any broadcaster or interviewer.
It was flat in a way that I know for a fact Stephanie McMahon is not. There are plenty of criticisms that can be leveled at the former SmackDown General Manager, but being boring hasn’t exactly been one of them. She can be as outsized as anyone, which made her perfunctory appearance on Saturday all the worse. If the company wants the Stephanie McMahon nostalgia, and all the baggage that carries, then they should at least let her be the crazed cartoon character we’re used to. I’m not saying she should’ve slapped someone but ok maybe I am.
WWE has way too many broadcasters to need McMahon to pretend to be a journalist.
Winner: Karl-Anthony Towns
Professional Athletes, especially basketball players, do not always translate to smooth, or even competent, in-ring performers. Dennis Rodman was passable, Karl Malone was ok, but Karl-Anthony Towns has a killer chokeslam.
KAT was the star of the Danhausen Nonsense Match by a country mile, and even a few city blocks. Danhausen and McDonagh’s ill-advised decision to start the match as an honest-to-God wrestling match kicked things off in dour fashion. The introduction of Minihausens helped, but it wasn’t until the immense Towns made his way out of the cloning machine that the match kicked into gear. Towns delivered a beautiful chokeslam to McDonagh and then an even prettier one to Dominik Mysterio, through a table.
It was a breath of fresh air compared to the woeful exchange between Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Haliburton (more about that later), and will likely live on in clip shows and social media edits for years to come. Where a lot of the show struggled to feel special, Karl-Anthony Towns made the third match of a 5 match card feel like the actual main event.
Loser: Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Haliburton, Dignity Itself
Everything about the closing segment of Saturday Night’s Main Event was try-hard bulls***. It was an empty moment, designed to generate SportsCenter clips. Everyone involved looked worse, especially Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns.
The rivalry between the two is just personal enough that it felt very weird to see a chapter of it play out in what was -essentially- an for the New York Knicks, and Madison Square Garden; a kind of celebration between the two brands associated the closest with “The World’s Most Famous Arena.” I’m almost certain, they needed to get to “Roman Reigns holds the NBA Championship trophy, while Jalen Brunson holds with World Heavyweight Title” and asked ChatGPT to figure out the rest. Tyrese Haliburton was a complete non-entity in the segment, but TKO probably spent a wrestler’s salary to book him and fly him in anyways.
It was just a waste of resources, waste of time, and waste of a main event segment. It would’ve felt low-rent on a pre-taped “Raw” let alone a live “Saturday Night’s Main Event.” Guys like John Cena used to retire on this show and now it’s just being written with “Ad Space Here” in the show-closing spot.
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