Every 2017 WWE PPV main event ranked by in-ring value
By Luke Norris
10. WWE Clash of Champions: WWE Championship Match
AJ Styles (c) vs. Jinder Mahal
The final WWE pay-per-view main event of 2017 just cracks the top 10 as WWE Champion AJ Styles defended the WWE Championship against Jinder Mahal, who makes his final appearance on this list, and perhaps his last-ever appearance in a main event, at Clash of Champions.
Mahal spent 170 days as WWE Champion, which puts him in the top 25 on the all-time list in days spent as champ (think about that for a few minutes), but finally lost his title to AJ Styles on an episode of SmackDown Live from Manchester, England in November. This was his automatic rematch and the outcome of this match was actually a little up in the air. Word was that he might regain the title and keep it until WrestleMania 34 so he could drop it to John Cena. However, that thankfully didn’t happen.
It’s hard to have a bad match with AJ Styles. With all due respect to guys like Kenny Omega and all the great wrestlers in the world right now, Styles is the best in the business and showed exactly why that is in this match with Mahal. He made Jinder look like an absolute star here. I said it in my recent review of Clash of Champions and I’ll say it again here. This wasn’t even close to being one of the best matches of Styles’ career but it may have the best we’ve ever seen from Jinder and he can thank Styles for that.
I thought these two told a nice story in the ring with Mahal focusing in on Styles’ ribs and AJ selling very well for him. The slow-down moves like the body scissors and abdominal stretch helped move that along but did hinder the pace a bit. The Boston crowd, which had been quite loud at the beginning of the pay-per-view, had been given a few disappointing matches down the stretch and weren’t really into a lot of this match. However, Styles was able to get them back into it a bit with his usual array of aerial maneuvers and picked up the pace towards the conclusion. The Singh Brothers took some more punishment on the outside before Styles locked in the calf-crusher to end things.