Chris Jericho defeated Kevin Owens on Sunday at Payback to win back the United States Championship, and he will now bring the title with him to SmackDown Live.Jericho focused on injuring Owens' hand after Owens forced a rope break while locked in the Walls of Jericho by getting his finger on the bottom rope.Jericho locked in the submission again, and with Owens' hand too hurt to extend his fingers to the rope, he had no choice but to tap out. WWE shared a photo of the new champion:Uproxx's Brandon Stroud enjoyed the match psychology leading to the final sequence:WWE star James Ellsworth reacted to the result:The Big Lead's Ryan Glasspiegel noted the Walls of Jericho has increasingly become a transitional move for Jericho, adding to the surprise of Sunday's finish:Owens beat Jericho for the United States Championship in a match at WrestleMania 33 that was several months in the making.KO and Y2J were seemingly inseparable until Owens turned on his former best friend during the Festival of Friendship.That prompted Jericho to distract The Prizefighter during his match against Goldberg at Fastlane, which caused him to lose the Universal Championship.Owens got some measure of revenge by beating Jericho at the Showcase of Immortals, but that wasn't enough for him.On the Raw following WrestleMania, Owens attacked Jericho backstage and put him through a table, but that only further motivated Y2J to fight back.Jericho jumped Owens the next week after KO lost a match to Dean Ambrose, which set the stage for their clash at Payback.Owens was moved to SmackDown as part of the Superstar Shakeup, and he wasted little time in agitating the WWE Universe, as seen in this tweet courtesy of WWE's official Twitter account:The Canadian Superstar was also quick to insult the rest of the locker room, which is something he did regularly on Raw:When Owens appeared on SmackDown, general manager Daniel Bryan announced that his match against Jericho at Payback would have high stakes with the winner bringing the U.S. title to the blue brand.In the meantime, Bryan held a Triple Threat match for the No. 1 contendership between AJ Styles, Sami Zayn and Baron Corbin, which Styles won.The prevailing thought was that Owens would win at Payback and go on to face Styles since Jericho is set to leave on tour with Fozzy in the near future.Jericho surprisingly came out on the winning end, however, which means a reprisal of his former feud with Styles could be in the cards before taking another WWE sabbatical.Listen toRing Rust Radiofor all of the hot wrestling topics. Catch the latest episode in the player above (warning: some languageNSFW).
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