WWE Clash of Champions 2017: Owens & Zayn vs. Nakamura & Orton match preview

The match

Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn team up to take on Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura in the likely main event of tonight’s (Sun., Dec. 17, 2017) WWE Clash of Champions pay-per-view (PPV) from the TD Garden Arena in Boston, Massachusetts. Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan will serve as special guest referees.

The story

Owens and McMahon have been feuding for a long time now, with the Commissioner getting involved in all of his top star’s business, and the two even competing in a match at Hell in a Cell. It was there that Zayn joined forces with his good friend/bitter enemy and they’ve been raising hell on SmackDown Live ever since.

They raised so much hell, in fact, that McMahon got fed up and went about about systematically trying to find reasons to fire them. Bryan, the General Manager of the show, has opposed this radical stance, inadvertently pitting the two authority figures against each other.

Shane, after all, inserted himself as special guest referee into a match he also stipulated would result in the firing of one team if they lose. Bryan, then, felt it necessary to make himself a second referee to ensure there is no foul play.

This isn’t so much about good vs. evil as it is about business vs. personal, the interests of the company and the moral dilemma those interests create. If you don’t know who to cheer for, that’s okay, both Bryan and Shane have justifiable motives driving their actions.

What to expect

This is more about an angle than a match, so any and all intrigue comes not from how the match will be worked or who will win but how they’ll get there. The good news is they’ve built it in such a way that we’ll almost surely get resolution by the end of the evening.

Follow along with the entire event right here.