WWE SmackDown Results: Biggest Winners, Losers and Moments from January 31

The first post-Royal Rumble episode of SmackDown wasted little time setting up the marquee matches for the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view on February 11.

Dean Ambrose, The Miz, Bray Wyatt, AJ Styles and Baron Corbin were announced as the five men who will challenge John Cena for the WWE Championship at the event, but only one was able to earn "winner" status for this week's broadcast.

Was it The Phenomenal One, who scored a big main event victory, or The Reaper of Souls, who set himself up nicely for his first WWE title reign, if the moment were to arise?

Who joined that surging star on this week's rundown of biggest winners and losers?

Take a look at this exclusive recap from the January 31 episode of SmackDown.

Winner: Baron Corbin

Baron Corbin's rise on the SmackDown brand has him seeing championship gold.

On Tuesday night, he was named one of the five Superstars to challenge John Cena for the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber.

Beyond that, he was spotlighted in the show-closing angle, which saw him enter the ring after the main event between AJ Styles and Dean Ambrose, laying The Lunatic Fringe out and planting The Miz with his End of Days finisher.

A televised loss to Cena a few weeks back had some believing that Corbin had cooled significantly entering the Royal Rumble. But at Sunday night's monumental event, he was SmackDown's longest-lasting competitor and the Superstar responsible for eliminating Braun Strowman.

The strong followup suggests Corbin could factor heavily in SmackDown's WrestleMania plans.

Loser: SmackDown Tag Team Division

One look at the mangled mess of tag teams from Tuesday's SmackDown produces an inconvenient truth for the blue brand: Its tag team division is abysmal.

After American Alpha and The Usos, there is no one team credible enough to run with the tag team titles for any extended period of time.

For a show that has gotten just about everything else right in its first year, SmackDown's inability to build a roster of teams capable of competing with American Alpha remains its most glaring failure.

The lack of depth in the division smacks the viewer in the face, enforcing the idea that tag teams simply are not a priority of any kind to the writing team.

Winner: Naomi

Naomi pinned Alexa Bliss for the second time in as many nights, further stating her case for a shot at the SmackDown Women's Championship.

Such an opportunity has eluded Naomi for the majority of her career. Often "the other woman" in feuds, her athleticism has never been in doubt. What has, though, has been Creative's dedication to pushing her as a credible threat to the top female Superstars on the roster.

That fear appears to be a thing of the past at this point, even if she still has areas of her performance in need of improvement.

She needs to be able to connect verbally with the audience, something she has struggled with throughout her career. Still, she has a chance that she has not had to this point.

Whether she can capitalize on it and benefit from effective booking will determine whether or not she continues to grow as a performer and earns the title run she has never experienced.

Loser: John Cena

The handling of John Cena on Tuesday's show was beyond questionable.

Little was made of his historic championship victory, No. 16 in a Hall of Fame career. There was little meat to his promo, which was about as generic an interview any Superstar has cut in recent memory. Even his trusting of Luke Harper to be his tag team partner, given everything they had been through in the past, was uncharacteristically nonsensical.

Cena, the franchise star of WWE, was treated like a dimwitted babyface who deserved the loss he endured.

That is the type of booking not typically reserved for Cena, whose legendary protection at the hands of WWE Creative is well-established. It almost leaves one to wonder if his days as a priority in Vince McMahon's company are numbered.