10 Best WWE TV Matches Of 2017

What was the last thing you did of your own free will that lasted longer than three hours? No, five. Six if you're particularly masochistic.

Few could probably manage that much time with their own family without at least multiple trips to the toilet to break up the monotony, smartphone in hand. Perhaps you donated a day to the duvet, gobbling up episode after episode of your favourite binge-watch along with a 'share-sized' snack that blatantly isn't getting split? An average working day falls somewhere between seven and nine hours for most, survived mainly to earn enough money to do one of the above all over again.

The point of that wasn't to ponder the futility of life's hamster wheel, but to consider the scale of WWE's audience request every single Monday and Tuesday. Raw and SmackDown Live! total five hours if you grit your teeth through every minute, and thats before overruns, extended editions or - heaven forfend - time made for 205 Live on the WWE Network.

Extending the length of his throbbing flagship for the first time in 1997 then again in 2012, Vince McMahon's televisual dominance has never been more financially fruitful. The medium may be on a steep decline, but the company's Q3 breakdown revealed an expected windfall of $180million for WWE thanks to their relationship with NBC Universal.

If that sort of cash continues to flow, so too does the output. Thank goodness certain matches make the slog so worthwhile.

It took so many years of endless performers openly professing to restoring glory to the Intercontinental Championship that the pursuit lost all meaning and the belt itself became the damaged goods the wrestlers proclaimed it to be.

Credit then to The Miz, the man most responsible for the title's actual re-emergence as a legitimate prize after nearly spending the better part of 2016 and 2017 in possession of the title.

Roman Reigns' liberation of the strap was as cathartic as Dolph Ziggler's a year earlier, but 'The Big Dog' immediately lived up to expectations with a fabulous defence just a fortnight removed from winning it. Coming off the back of a well-worked effort with Elias seven days earlier, Roman's own spin on the open challenge yielded a contest against Kurt Angle's irritating offspring in a match that highlighted just how much talent has been thumbed down hard by wretched creative for much of the year.

Jordan abused Reigns with a parade of suplexes and throws, exhibiting his freakish power and conditioning. Ultimately Roman finally fought back with a series of takedowns that weakened the challenger's allegedly injured knee before a scoring with a match-winning Superman Punch/Spear combo.