AJ Styles Bagging This Win Broke An Unwritten Rule

Wrestling live events, or what were once known as "house shows," can be a unique experience for fans in that they're often more intimate, the performers tend to have a little fun trying out new things, and you never know, a surprise or two might be in order, right there in front of you, up close and personal. Title changes, however, don't often take place at these non-televised shows, and when a card is announced, though fans get excited to hear of a champion defending his or her title, the general expectation is that the champ will retain. Still, every now and then, a championship will change hands off of TV. Sometimes this can come in the form of an accident, like when The Rockers won the WWF Tag Team Championships during a 1990 taping for "WWF Wrestling Challenge," only to have the match basically disappear from existence thanks to a broken rope. (We'll put an asterisk on this one since, technically, the bout was pegged for TV but ultimately scrubbed altogether.)

Other times, the shock value of a change under the radar is done to further an ongoing feud, like when Samoa Joe bested Finn Balor for the NXT Championship in Lowell, Massachusetts in 2016. And while, for a time, it was commonplace for non-televised title changes to take place, only for the former champion to regain the belt by the time TV came back around so very few were the wiser, a la Booker T and Chris Benoit with the WCW World Television Championship in 1998, every now and then, you just get a straight-up switch when you least expect it. Such was the case in 2017 when AJ Styles captured the WWE United States Championship from Kevin Owens at Madison Square Garden.

Styles' win wasn't at all the surprise in the matter here, as "The Phenomenal One" has primarily gotten the better of "The Prize Fighter" in their feuds over both the US and Intercontinental Championships in their time in WWE. The fact that it took place at the live event, however, and that the change was recognized before their rematch at Battleground a few weeks later did catch more than a few people off guard. In the return bout, Owens recaptured the title, albeit apparently by accident, furthering this bizarre saga between the two that saw Chris Jericho enter the frey for a Triple Threat match on the next episode of "WWE SmackDown," where Styles got the belt right back.

A little confusion isn't always all bad, as Jericho and Owens got to put a stamp on the feud that had fizzled after the infamous Festival of Friendship and a match at WrestleMania 33 with which neither was thrilled, while Styles rode the wave of his United States Championship run, parlaying it into a win over Jinder Mahal for the WWE Championship in late 2017 that ended up being more than a year-long run.

When an unwritten rule of wrestling is broken, oftentimes, those involved suffer some consequences, with 1996's "Curtain Call" incident standing out as probably the most egregious example. But when the plan all along is for a title to change hands at a live event, technically, that's not so much breaking said unwritten rule as it is thinking outside of the box, and in this case, for Styles, Owens, Jericho and others, all turned out well in the end.