As someone who has been critical of WWE's booking of Oba Femi since WrestleMania, I hold my hands up on this one — they may have just redeemed themselves.
How foolish we all feel now, those of us who thought having "The Ruler" in the King of the Ring final was just a ploy to set up some kind of Brock Lesnar interference. To even say it out loud now feels humiliating, but some of us genuinely thought Jey Uso was going to beat Oba Femi on Saturday at Night of Champions.
To be fair, WWE did plant a few seeds to suggest that might be the case. Over on "Raw," we had the all-powerful Roman Reigns making it clear that he wanted to see his cousin challenging Cody Rhodes at SummerSlam. That seemed like a good sign that WWE might indeed crown King Jey in Riyadh, thus setting up a Bloodline-tastic angle at SummerSlam. Though it turned out it was just a red herring.
Here's another mea culpa: who among us genuinely expected that Femi vs. Uso would be a solid wrestling match? In all honesty, whoever produced this one knocked it out of the park. They managed to let Uso get some serious offense in, while still maintaining Femi's whole indestructible vibe. Among the hefty clotheslines and no-sells there were some moments of genius: Uso's acrobatic escape from Femi's first "Fall From Grace" was beautiful.
To cap it off, they opted for exactly the right finish: Femi managing to put his opponent down for the three-count after the first hit of his finisher. In storyline or otherwise, Uso should have no reason to feel ashamed of that performance — though no doubt he'll get a storyline tongue-lashing from Reigns on "Raw" nevertheless.