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What's the story?
United States Champion and SmackDown Live superstar AJ Styles was a guest on the E&C Pod of Awesomeness recently, where he spoke to the two legends about a variety of topics pertaining to WWE and beyond. During the course of the conversation, he also revealed why he won his first US Championship in an untelevised event at Madison Square Garden.
In case you didn't know...
The news of AJ Styles winning the US Championship literally came out of nowhere and took the whole world by surprise. While he dropped the title to Kevin Owens thereafter at Battleground, he reclaimed it on SmackDown Live, the night after the pay-per-view. The world wondered in unison why Styles would not get his first big win on television, and AJ Styles revealed that Vince McMahon was the brain behind the operations at Madison Square Garden.
The heart of the matter
This is what Styles said about the matter:
“To me, it’s smart. It’s something that hasn’t been done in a long time and to do it at Madison Square Garden and everybody with WWE knows that’s a big deal. I think it was awesome. I think it was very clever and I loved it. There was a pop, ‘he won! Yes!’ but, ‘well, who’s going to walk out there?’ and then, there was another pop because nobody walked out there. It was really cool, but it was smart to not do that every year, but every couple of years to do something like that. I think it just came down to doing something different and it was Vince’s call and no one else’s. And yeah, it was great.”
The surprise element certainly made waves on social media and possibly even added a feeling of 'anything can happen at WWE Live events' to the entire situation. Vince McMahon certainly knows how to take the world by storm!
What's next?
Next week, Kevin Owens invokes his rematch clause for the WWE United States Championship. It remains to be seen if AJ Styles will drop the title yet again!
Author's take
I personally do not like how the US Championship is being booked, but I have no problem with the title change at Madison Square Garden. I would have personally preferred longer reigns, instead of the US Championship changing hands at every given opportunity. Let's hope Styles wins comprehensively next week and both men can move on to a fresh program thereafter.
