WWE Battleground 2017 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

WWE United States Championship Match

AJ Styles (c) vs. Kevin Owens

What we learned: We learned here that this feud between AJ Styles and Kevin Owens still isn’t over.

This was the match I was most looking forward to and while it wasn’t the worst match of the night by any stretch of the imagination, I was hoping for a little more. Even the Philadelphia crowd seemed to lose interest by the end of this match and the ref bump and silly finish didn’t help matters.

Yes, they fought a decent back-and-forth bout for a little while, but again, the pace was a little slower than I thought it would be. I actually was expecting this to be the last match of the program so both men could move onto something else for SummerSlam, which I’m sure is why I thought this would be better.

There was no real sense of urgency happening here and it came off flat. I didn’t think the ref bump was necessary but I will give him credit for making it look good as Owens did just throw Styles right into him. Styles’ shoulder was clearly up during what I assume was supposed to be a double pin but the music guy must make all the calls on these sorts of things because KO’s music hit before the ref even motioned to the announcer on who the winner was. Didn’t like it.

What’s next: The rematch clause obviously keeps this thing going a little longer but I really don’t want to see this go all the way to SummerSlam. This has been fun but it’s time to move on. What I would do is have Shane or Daniel Bryan talk about how weird the finish was and all of that and then book one final match on Tuesday night. The winner walks away with the United States Championship and the rematch clause is taken out of the equation. Then, it really doesn’t matter who wins and Styles can go do his thing with Nakamura and Owens can get into it with somebody else — maybe someone who also picked up a win on Sunday night.