10 Great WWE United States Championship Matches You Completely Forgot About

1. Chris Benoit Vs. William Regal - Velocity 2005

Regal Finlay Great American Bash 2006
WWE

If there was a Championship match on Velocity, the chances were it was going to be a Cruiserweight one. On one fateful night in September 2005, however, Chris Benoit put his United States Championship on the line against William Regal, and away from the prying eyes of the big shows the two put on a great 10-minute clinic.

Within two minutes, the thing had broken down to legit headbutting. This is as close to a fight as you would have got at the time in WWE, and I'd be shocked if there was ever a Velocity match that came close to this in terms of intensity and overall quality.

When top names head down to the C shows, you can forgive them for phoning it in somewhat. Not so here, as Benoit and Regal go at it as if it was the main event of any pay-per-view. The pace slows down as one would expect, but the rest holds are far from resting. These stretches are stretchy, people.

The ending is somewhat flat, as Benoit hits a Tiger Suplex and locks in the Crossface with Regal tapping almost immediately, but this is a fantastic US Championship match that took place on a show barely anybody ever watched. Bravo chaps, bravo.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.