New Intercontinental Champion Crowned On WWE SmackDown

A new WWE Intercontinental Champion was crowned on tonight’s episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown in the tournament final on FOX.

AJ Styles has won the IC Title for the first time in his WWE career after defeating Daniel Bryan in what is being heralded as one of the best WWE matches in recent memory,

Bryan and Styles met in the final after Bryan previously beat Drew Gulak and Sheamus, and Styles beat Shinsuke Nakamura then got a bye to the final.

The bye was because of the hit and run angle with Sheamus, Jeff Hardy and Elias a couple of weeks ago, which meant that the semi-final match between Elias and Styles was cancelled. Bryan was actually supposed to face Hardy who’d already beaten Sheamus, but because Hardy was ruled out Sheamus won a battle royal to replace him against Bryan.

With the match being pretaped, reports came out before it aired saying that it was excellent, and the general consensus among fans is that that was indeed the case. It went through several commercial breaks and ended up being about 35-40 minutes.

The reason for the tournament in the first place is because WWE stripped Sami Zayn of the title due to him not travelling to shows during the coronavirus pandemic.

• AJ Styles
• Daniel Bryan
• Smackdown
• wwe

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