WWE Title Defended At PPV/PLE For First Time Since WrestleMania 37

Shockingly, this historic title has been sidelined for quite a while.

by Scott Carlson
Sheamus Walter
WWE.com

Sit down for this one: Saturday's barn-burner Intercontinental Championship match between Gunther and Sheamus was the first time the title had been defended on PPV/PLE in more than 500 days.

To be exact, it was 511 days ago that the IC title was contested at WrestleMania 37, when Apollo Crews defeated Big E to capture the championship. Since then, the Intercontinental Championship has been exclusively defended on SmackDown, with superstars like Crews, Shinsuke Nakamura, Sami Zayn and Ricochet holding the title.

That's an insane gap for a historic title that has been considered the workhorse championship in WWE lore. Even the oft-ignored WWE Women's Tag Team Championship hasn't gone that lone without a PPV/PLE defense.

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Since winning the strap in June, Gunther has defended the IC title against Ricochet, R-Truth, Nakamura and now Sheamus. His Clash at the Castle match against the Celtic Warrior was immediately praised, so here's hoping that this means that we could see the Intercontinental Championship get more attention on PLEs in the very near future.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.