WWE MITB: AJ Styles shouldn’t have lost clean to Seth Rollins

WWE unnecessarily seemed to cut a dream rivalry between AJ Styles and Seth Rollins short at Money In The Bank.

WWE is never afraid of overdoing something. From popular gags and entrance themes to matches fans say they love, WWE practically always does them all until you’re just plain sick of seeing them.

Apparently, they drew the line with AJ Styles versus Seth Rollins at Money In The Bank.

Instead of finding a way to extend that dream rivalry, Rollins beat Styles clean after an amazing match.

In fact, the match was so good that it’s almost guaranteed to be in the match of the year discussion come December. It had great pacing, plenty of innovative moves, and likely hit every note fans wanted to see from a dream match-up between 2 of WWE’s most talented stars.

It was the kind of match that you almost instantly wanted to watch again. The kind of back-and-forth war that you could easily envision an exciting rematch of down the line.

Unfortunately, it appears like WWE won’t be giving that to us any time soon.

AJ Styles lost clean at Money In The Bank. No foot on the ropes or referee missing a lifted shoulder, it was a straight loss.

To a certain extent, that’s a satisfying outcome. Too many undeserving matches end with shenanigans these days when they just don’t have to.

Look no further than Rey Mysterio versus Samoa Joe at Money In The Bank. Mysterio beat Joe with a roll-up pin, but Joe’s shoulders were up. That led to a post-match beat down of Mysterio which almost certainly guarantees a rematch.

Basically, that means we’re going to get a 3rd showdown between a pairing that has been the most forgettable match on the card of the last 2 pay-per-views.

Instead of repeating that feud, why couldn’t WWE have extended Styles versus Rollins?

Finding out who’s ultimately triumphant between 2 of the most popular and gifted talents in the company could have easily been put off into the future. That same satisfying end from Money In The Bank could have easily come after a rivalry with a short build was extended another month to give us 1 more go around of a 5-star caliber match.

Even though we’ve seen that extension of a dream match come back to bite WWE and fans in the past, it wasn’t long ago that we were marred in the umpteenth encounter of the low-blow fest that was Shinsuke Nakamura versus AJ Styles, this could have easily been different.

We really didn’t see much of a build, nor did we see any lasting character change in the build for this match. The entire rivalry was basically inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

After this match, there’s a clear path for Rollins to face off against Baron Corbin, Brock Lesnar, or any of the other far less exciting Raw world title challengers.

That thought of Baron Corbin’s boring push extending to the Universal Championship picture, or perhaps worse yet Brock Lesnar making an early cash-in of his newly won briefcase to recapture Raw’s top title, is almost sickening when you realize how easy it would have been for WWE to extend this dream match-up.

It would have been so simple for WWE to have used a wonky ending to let this rivalry stretch just a bit longer. Let it build up some added drama or stakes until we inevitably reached a highly anticipated final bout.

Instead, the potential of a surprise swerve on an upcoming Raw aside, for now it looks like fans will just have to be content re-watching Money In The Bank on the WWE Network and dreaming of what could have been when it comes to AJ Styles versus Seth Rollins.