In a surprising turn of events, Kevin Owens lost to AJ Styles in a title match at Friday’s live event at Madison Square Garden. The Phenomenal One became the WWE United States Champion well before the upcoming Battleground PPV where the title match was initially supposed to take place. This caused a lot of speculation from the fans and critics who were surprised by the fact that the big title changed happened at a non-televised WWE live show.
While many critics, including our own featured writer, Billi Bhatti speculated that the reason for the hasty title change was due to the upcoming AJ Styles documentary, Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer has a different take on things.
Meltzer opined in the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio that Kevin Owens was injured prior to the weekend’s live events and this caused the sudden title change at Friday’s live event which co-incidentally was a RAW show with the AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens match being the only SmackDown match on the card. However, despite the speculation that he was injured, Owens fought on Saturday as well at another live event where he took on Styles and Baron Corbin in a Triple-Threat Match.
The video footage of the match can be seen below:
We will get to know in the following weeks if KO is actually injured as well as the extent of the injuries if there were any, and if he has to take time off of in-ring action for a while.