Last week on Smackdown Live, James Ellsworth defeated AJ Styles in one of the biggest upsets in recent memory. It wasn’t without help from guest referee Dean Ambrose but the record books will always show that Ellsworth had a pinfall victory over AJ Styles.
However, what clouded that match was the fact that Ellsworth did not put his head back and instead tucked his chin in, and he landed on his head instead of his face. But AJ Styles being the pro that he is, rapidly made sure he landed on his legs and not his knees like he usually does. Had he done that, the 14-year-long career of James Ellsworth may very likely have come to a screeching halt.
Ellsworth was recently on the Bischoff On Wrestling Podcast, where he explained that AJ Styles protected him when he took the move wrong:
“I got it back at the last second. He took care of me too. In practice everything was fine and all that. It’s just that instinct thing for a wrestler to, “tuck your chin.” That’s the one move you don’t do it on. I felt so bad about it afterwards. They were all cool about it and everything because it looked good on TV. It looked like he killed me.
“It’s not like it looked bad or anything. It was just that instinct of, “tuck your chin.” I’ve been told to do it for fourteen years and that’s all it was. I was ok. It was fine. I didn’t get hurt obviously and AJ is, like I said earlier in my humble opinion, is the best in the world. He knows how to adjust to things and everything was ok afterwards”
With that victory, Smackdown Live General Manager Daniel Bryan told Ellsworth on Talking Smack that he would receive a WWE World Championship match against AJ Styles the following week. The following week, Ellsworth once again got the victory over The Phenomenal One. However, this time it was by disqualification, meaning that Ellsworth did not become WWE World Champion. Nonetheless, he was over as always and even got his own theme song, his own t-shirt, and also his own chants from the Denver audience.
It was reported that Ellsworth’s t-shirt is the third-highest selling T-shirt on WWEShop, only behind Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens. He is even ahead of Goldberg and one of WWE’s franchise players, Roman Reigns. This information was deduced by the “top selling” filters on WWEShop. Either way, for a man who is not even signed, that truly is an incredible feat. Daniel Bryan, Becky Lynch, and even Alexa Bliss were full of praise for Ellsworth and proudly wore his t-shirt.
Here is a clip of the botched Styles Clash:
You can see the full match below:
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