WWE SmackDown Grades: A New Day Rising For Team Hell No
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3. Rusev And Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles And Jeff Hardy
The blue brand will see two big singles title matches take place at Extreme Rules with the WWE Championship and the United States Championship on the line. But thanks to the turn of events that took place last night, those two situations would butt heads.
WWE Champion AJ Styles took on Shinsuke Nakamura in one-on-one action, but the match never got a clean finish thanks to Rusev and Aiden English. This led to U.S. Champion Jeff Hardy joining the fold to try and help Styles out. GM Paige had seen enough and she pitted Styles and Hardy against Rusev and Nakamura in tag team action immediately.
The match got far less time than Styles vs. Nakamura got just minutes before, but it did what it needed to do in the long run. Things began to break down towards the end, but The Bulgarian Brute managed to make the most out of it and after a huge kick to Hardy, Rusev got the win for his team to gain key momentum before his WWE Championship opportunity on Sunday.
Both Styles vs. Rusev and Hardy vs. Nakamura should be great matches at Extreme Rules, but last night definitely helped out both feuds. Will we see a changing of the guard on Sunday? Can Nakamura capture his first main roster championship and can Rusev capture his first main roster world title? If last night means anything, both could happen.
Seeing two worlds collide, so to speak, was a nice change of pace last night when the WWE Championship picture met the U.S. Championship picture in a pretty good tag team match.