10 Great WWE United States Championship Matches You Completely Forgot About

7. Shelton Benjamin Vs. Hurricane Helms - SmackDown, December 26 2008

Regal Finlay Great American Bash 2006
WWE.com

Shelton Benjamin is an individual who also finds himself in the pile of 'underrated and underused' wrestlers from the past, but the Gold Standard also had a decent number of secondary title runs throughout his career. The problem is that rarely were they strongly booked, with his face runs cut short and his heel runs plagued by '____ has pinned the US Champion!' feuds.

In 2008 Benjamin had a brief feud with Hurricane Helms that followed such a story, with Helms pinning Shelton in a non-title match as well as a tag battle to earn himself a United States Championship match on SmackDown. JR and Tazz have the call, and the first thing that stands out is just how good Jim Ross was at his job.

The second thing is how big a missed opportunity babyface Hurricane Helms was. Despite wearing attire that looks like he just stepped out of the gym, Helms shows impressive babyface fire throughout the match, staying one step ahead of Benjamin until a huge buckle bomb from the champion turns the tide.

A number of close falls bring the crowd into things towards the end, including a beautiful counter neckbreaker out of a suplex by the champion. In the end a quick one-two of enziguri and Pay Dirt is enough for Shelton to pull out the win in this fun little sprint.

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.