5 botches that caused the wrong WWE Superstar to win a match

#4 Kevin Owens pins AJ Styles

One of the most memorable botched finishes in recent years came at Battleground 2017 when Kevin Owens pinned AJ Styles to win the United States Championship.

Styles was the clear favourite to emerge with the victory, having won the title just two weeks earlier during a live event, but the referee surprisingly counted a 1-2-3 for KO at the same time that “The Phenomenal One” had locked in a submission on his opponent.

WWE resolved the problem two nights later on SmackDown Live when Styles defeated Owens, as well as Chris Jericho, in a Triple Threat match to reclaim the United States Championship.

One month later, Jericho said that the Battleground finish was indeed a botch, telling Busted Open Radio:

“The idea was for me to work with AJ on Tuesday, and do nothing with Kevin. And then the match happened on the Sunday and they legitimately screwed it up, it happens sometimes - the finish didn’t work… It ended up working out great. It was the classic Vince [McMahon] line of taking a negative and turn it into a positive.”