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Of all the potential title changes at Hell In A Cell 2017, few expected AJ Styles to lose his United States Championship.
“The Phenomenal One” was originally set to take on Baron Corbin at the pay-per-view, but general manager Daniel Bryan announced on the kick-off show that Tye Dillinger would also be in the match following his victory over “The Lone Wolf” on SmackDown Live last week.
In the closing stages of the Triple Threat match, AJ was on course to retain when he connected with a Phenomenal Forearm on Dillinger, only for Corbin to knock the champ through the ropes and pin Tye for the 1-2-3.
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Baron is now a champion in WWE for the first time in his career, but where does this leave Styles? In this article, we look at five possible reasons why “The Face That Runs The Place” no longer has the US title.
#1 Shane McMahon needs a tag partner
Hell In A Cell was the best SmackDown-exclusive PPV of 2017, with the highlight being the closing stages of the main event between Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens.
Just as Shane was about to drop an elbow on Owens from the top of the 20ft high cell, Sami Zayn appeared out of nowhere to pull his former best friend out of the way before draping his body over the SmackDown commissioner for the win.
Viewers of Talking Smack will already know where we’re going with this. It seemed pretty clear from AJ’s comments on the show that his next direction will be to feud with Owens and Zayn. Styles said that while he and Shane haven’t always seen eye to eye, he’d be happy to help if he needs an ally.
With Survivor Series on the horizon, don’t be surprised to see Styles/Shane vs. Owens/Zayn on the card.
#2 AJ Styles is too good for the US title
When John Cena was United States Champion and he issued open challenges every week, it was great. He was a former World Champion but it made sense for him to hold a lesser title at that stage, with the task of elevating younger talents.
When Chris Jericho, another former World Champion, won the US Championship from Roman Reigns, it made sense because that was the one title that had evaded Y2J his entire career.
When Kevin Owens, formerly the Universal Champion, won the title from Jericho at WrestleMania, it began a summer-long storyline with him proudly boasting in promos and on social media that he was “The New Face of America”.
Perhaps it’s just me but, unlike those three examples of former World Champions going on to hold a lesser title, did AJ not seem too big at this stage of his career to be holding the US Championship?
His four-month run with the WWE title felt like it could have lasted a lot longer, and this two-and-a-half month stint as US champ was never going to be anything more than a stop-gap on his way to returning to the main-event WWE title picture.
#3 To give new stars the chance to shine
Between 2009-2013, nine Superstars won the US Championship without having been a World Champion before. However, in the same period of time between 2013-2017, only three Superstars — Rusev, Kalisto and now Baron Corbin — won the title having never previously been a World Champion.
While the US Championship used to be considered a platform for Superstars to make their name and go on to bigger and better things, that has not been the case for quite some time.
Perhaps a return to the former system of booking, starting with this reign with Baron, could give newer talents a chance to make an impression instead of relying on former World Champions to carry a title they have, let’s be honest, already surpassed.
#4 Baron Corbin needed a big win
WWE is clearly still high on Baron Corbin, despite talk of him having the dreaded ‘backstage heat’ for speaking up in a meeting about concussions. He’s consistently been involved in storylines since joining the main roster and now he’s finally won his first championship.
However, as a character, Corbin has talked the talk more than he’s walked the walk in 2017. From his rivalries with Dean Ambrose, Sami Zayn, Shinsuke Nakamura and John Cena, all of which he lost, to his failed Money In The Bank contract cash-in, Baron has struggled to back up his big mouth for much of this year.
Any more talk of how he’s going to do something, before subsequently failing, and he would’ve been on the right path to Bray Wyatt levels of believability as a character. A title win over AJ Styles, albeit having pinned Tye for the 1-2-3, was much-needed for Corbin.
#5 Jinder Mahal was being overshadowed
Jinder Mahal has had to do a lot of convincing to prove he’s a believable WWE champion, and it hasn’t helped that the two holders of SmackDown’s secondary title during his reign have been Kevin Owens and AJ Styles.
KO and AJ are Superstars whose rivalries should be main-eventing PPVs, never mind weekly SmackDown shows, and their feud this year - first with each other and then with Shane McMahon - has been overshadowing Jinder’s storylines.
The WWE Championship will always be the main title on whatever show it’s on, but it didn’t feel that way when a Superstar the calibre of AJ was holding the US Championship.
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