Rumor: Why Did AJ Styles Lose The WWE Championship?

So what’s why it happened. Coming into this week’s SmackDown Live, AJ Styles had held the WWE Championship for 371 days, good for the a tie for the eighth longest in the title’s history. That mark wasn’t extended on Tuesday as Daniel Bryan won the title in a pretty big surprise, especially with Survivor Series taking place in five days. While it’s pretty recent, we might have an idea of why the title change took place.

According to PWInsider.com, the reason for the title change was to prevent Styles from losing to Brock Lesnar for the second year in a row. Styles was defeated by Lesnar last year in the WWE Champion vs. Universal Champion match at the 2017 Survivor Series. The same match is planned for this year and it seems likely that Lesnar would have been scheduled to win again.

So how did he win the title?

Daniel Bryan wins WWE Championship in shocking fashion: SmackDown LIVE, Nov. 13, 2018

Opinion: Is it just me or does this make no sense? So you want to prevent Styles from losing to Lesnar, so you take the title of of him instead? Was there no option that involved a DQ or countout loss? Or maybe having a match that didn’t involve Lesnar vs. Styles in the first place? It seems like this could be solved a lot more easily with something being done earlier, that doesn’t involve Styles losing the title.

What do you think of Styles losing the title? Who wins between Bryan and Lesnar? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2003 Smackdown Reviews.

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