5 reasons why AJ Styles retained the United States Championship against Cedric Alexander
AJ Styles and Cedric Alexander have given us quite a few matches between them, and the two have shown great chemistry in the ring which has resulted in some great matches.
This week on RAW, Alexander once again got an opportunity to claim the United States Championship title from AJ Styles in a one-on-one match. Even though the match went all the way down to the wire, Cedric was unable to finish strong and lost the match, which could also have been his last US Championship shot for some time.
While fans had been rooting for the underdog to win for some time, it came as little surprise that the company decided to book the match in a way that their more popular Superstar comes out on top.
At this time, it seems like WWE is set on allowing The Phenomenal One to carry to US Title for months to come. Keeping that in mind, we will take a look at the five reasons why the company booked the match in a way to allow Styles to retain the United States Championship.
#5 To continue building the Championship’s value
While we talk a lot about how WWE has not stressed enough on the RAW Tag Team Champions over the past year and a half, we pay little focus to how the United States Championship has also suffered over the past two years.
At the turn of 2018, Bobby Roode won the title and held it for almost two months before losing it to the ever-so-deserving Randy Orton. Orton’s reign was cut short by Jinder Mahal, who held the title for just a week before losing it to Jeff Hardy.
Hardy was arguably the last United States Champion who increased the Championship’s value for three months between April and July 2018 before Shinsuke Nakamura took the title away from him and held it for almost five months but did not defend it regularly.
This significantly impacted the title’s value, and we then started to see the Championship jump waists regularly, from Nakamura to Rusev, to back to Nakamura and then to R-Truth.
Samoa Joe then held the title for some time and feuded over it with Rey Mysterio and then Ricochet. Now that the title is in AJ Styles’ hands, he seems like the perfect Superstar who can wear it around his waist for a long time and defend it regularly. Since Styles shows up every night, the value of the title is sure to increase for as long as it stays with the Phenomenal One.