In the TD Garden of Boston, Massachusetts last night the last WWE-PPV 2017 rose. In the main event of the SmackDown exclusive event AJ Styles defended his WWE Championship against Jinder Mahal. Prior to that, the Tag Team Match Randy Orton & Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn on the careers of the latter two. Two special guest referees, Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan, decided to do so.
Winner: Mojo Rawley per Running Forearm Smash, Rawley dominated the match from the beginning, Ryder only managed a brief comeback shortly before the end. The victory for Mojo was the only logical choice, as he seems to have plans for the end of the hype bros for the Long Island Iced Z, while the final crash into insignificance is likely to follow – which doesn’t mean the team would have had any relevance.
Rawley did some trash talking after the match, but there was no further beatdown, so that this feud could be over. If that’s the case, Rawley needs a follow-up feud as soon as possible to establish him as a heel, otherwise he will disappear into insignificance again, as he did during Ryder’s injury.
Winner & new United States Champion: Dolph Ziggler per Zig Zag to Corbin. Dolph is simply a phenomenon. Whenever you think that the man has reached the end of his WWE career after many years of catastrophic bookings and jobbing, he wins a Midcard title out of nowhere. Last night was no exception, because after the Entrances storyline, which was apparently only driven so that he could lie down for Roode, Ziggler seemed to have finally come to an end and his departure at the end of the contract.
But out of the blue he wins the US title again and it would probably come as no surprise if in the next few days a contract extension would be announced. Meanwhile, the meaning of this decision is probably not accessible to anyone, because both Roode – who has been irrelevant since the NXT call-up – and in particular Lone Wolf, whose Main Eventer career has been hanging by a thread since the more lost Money in the Bank cash-in, would have needed this victory much more urgently.
Now the showoff has the title to show that anything can happen in WWE. He will soon hand it over again, in doubt about one of his two opponents. Ultimately, no one has won through this booking decision.
Winner & further SmackDown Tag Team Champions: The Usos by Superfly Splash against Gable. The four teams showed in an extremely entertaining match that the SmackDown Tag Team Division is on the right track. Dominated for months by the two top teams Usos and New Day, Rusev & English and Gable & Benjamin were able to shine for months.
After several defeats in the last few weeks and Gable’s pin taken again, the latter should now earn a few more victories, if you don’t want to take back all the momentum created by the suggested heelturn. Rusev & English, or rather Rusev, is unbelievably over and the duo is likely to get a feud against the Usos for the titles. The New Day could be devoted to Gable & Benjamin or the Bludgeon Brothers.
Defending the Usos title makes perfect sense, as they have been WWE’s hottest team for some time now. At the same time, however, this approach was also a good opportunity to let the titles change without weakening them. Since these have not been used, Jimmy & Jey are expected to keep the gold for a while yet.
Page 1: US Champion Ziggler and The Usos convince
Page 2: McMahon and Bryan steal the show
Page 3: AJ Styles defends his belt against Jinder Mahal