When a champion puts their title on the line at a WWE house show it is usually expected that the champion will retain. But when AJ Styles took Kevin Owens’ United States Championship at a house show in Madison Square Garden last week the internet blew up.
One of the biggest questions on a lot of people’s minds was why WWE made the decision to put the title on AJ at a house show. Kevin Owens isn’t injured as he is still working live events after his title loss, so there must be another reason to it.
There have been rumors that WWE placed the US Title on AJ Styles so it can be featured as a highlight on his upcoming WWE DVD set. But other people have their own theories on why WWE put the United States title on AJ Styles in MSG.
On a recent episode of Killing The Town with Storm & Cyrus, they opened up on their theories why WWE made the decision to have Kevin drop the title to AJ and it made a lot of sense.
“We mentioned that there was plans to have Booker and Goldust win the Tag Titles on a house show to help boost business. That didn’t happen cause Booker got ill” Lance Storm remembers. “I don’t know if you saw the clip of the finish of this match that was floating around online but MSG exploded when AJ Styles won the title.”
“I think you’re missing the big story here and no one’s really touching on it” Cyrus rebutted. “The big story is why did they do this? They didn’t do it to try to make wrestling fun. They didn’t even do it to put smiles on people’s faces. I think that was a nice side-benefit. They did it as a response to Kenny Omega winning the US Title at the New Japan show.”
“That’s why they put [the US Title] on AJ. All the discussion about AJ and Kenny Omega, who’s better? Kenny Omega has a US Title, AJ Styles now has a US Title. This is gonna generate a lot of debate and a lot of banter and to me the popping the crowd is the side-benefit. This is a response to New Japan Pro Wrestling in my opinion.”
Lance Storm said he’s seen a lot of fans putting Styles and Omega side-by-side and talking about the fact they’re both US Champions. He said it’s been a long time since there was a dream match fans could talk about but with both Kenny and AJ holding US Titles it might be nice to bring back some “Apter Mag” style fantasy dream match writings. Storm also commented saying there probably isn’t a match out there he would like to see more than AJ Styles vs Kenny Omega.
“If AJ were to leave and go back to New Japan, well you’ve got a great built-in match” Cyrus replied. “There aren’t many matches that would be bigger than that one.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Transcription Template for Killing The Town with Storm and Cyrus with a H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
