James Ellsworth To Challenge AJ Styles For WWE World Title

Bout announced for next week's Smackdown.

James Elsworth Dean Ambrose AJ Styles
WWE.com

AJ Styles thought he had gamed the system when he selected beloved jobber James Ellsworth as his opponent on Smackdown, but an unlikely win by the diminutive star has rendered him the number one contender to the WWE World Championship.

Styles, fresh off a win over Dean Ambrose and John Cena at No Mercy, announced that he would be competing on Tuesday's Smackdown, then unveiled Ellsworth as his opponent. His plan backfired, though, when Smackdown general manager Daniel Bryan announced that Dean Ambrose would be the special guest referee for the match.

Ambrose, of course, wasn't about to let Styles pick up the victory. Despite his domination, the match kept going - when Styles made Ellsworth submit to the Calf Crusher, Ambrose turned and pretended to take a call on his cell phone. Later, when Styles hit the Styles Clash, Ambrose simply stopped counting after two.

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The finish came when Ambrose planted Styles with a Dirty Deeds, then pulled Ellsworth on top of the WWE World Champion and made the count. "The Phenomenal One" kicked out, but a second Dirty Deeds did the trick, and Ellsworth won. Later on Talking Smack, Bryan granted Ellsworth his shot on next week's Smackdown.

Also on next week's show, Naomi will take on Alexa Bliss and Jack Swagger will face Baron Corbin.

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Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013