A few weeks ago AJ Styles won the United States Championship for the first time in his career when he defeated Kevin Owens during a WWE live event at Madison Square Garden.
It appeared that AJ had big plans for the title, and on the following episode of SmackDown Live he announced that he was bringing the US Open Challenge back. The idea of the open challenge returning had fans excited, but it’s going to be hard for AJ to hold an open challenge now that he’s no longer the champion.
AJ Styles defended his United States Championship against Kevin Owens Sunday night at Battleground, and Owens became a three time United States Champion after he beat AJ. The win came as a bit of a shock to fans, as betting odds favored AJ prior to the match.
It’s being reported that original plans called for AJ Styles to retain, and the decision to have Kevin Owens win the belt was something that was decided after the show started.
The finish to the match was a little awkward. After trading submission holds back and forth, Owens rolled over and pinned AJ Styles to the mat to get the victory. It was somewhat anticlimactic, but it appears that the finish was not botched as Kevin Owens’ music was cued up, an AJ Styles did stay in the ring to sell the loss after the match.
It looks like we’ll be finding out tonight on SmackDown Live where this rivalry will go next.
On this week’s episode we’re talking to Simon Grimm, aka Simon Gotch about what’s next for his career and more. In the episode Simon goes into some interesting ideas that he pitched to WWE creative, where he wants to wrestle next, and he also shares the story of how he found out The Vaudevillains were getting called up to the WWE main roster. We’re also sharing our predictions for the WWE Battleground pay-per-view and more. You can subscribe to Still Real Radio on iTunes, and you can also check out the latest episode below.
