WWE: Why Did Zack Ryder Lose the United States Championship?

Zack Ryder’s dream of being the United States Championship ended quicker than he could have ever imagined. 

After a nearly four-month long feud with Dolph Ziggler, Ryder finally won the title at last month’s WWE TLC pay-per-view, but his reign lasted just 29 days. 

On last week’s episode of Monday Night Raw, Ryder lost his title to Jack Swagger, despite the fact that he was not medically cleared to compete. Ryder’s title loss came as a huge shock, considering that he had just won it and that many of us expected him to have a lengthy title reign. 

Ryder didn’t even hold the belt for a month, and some still aren’t sure why he lost it. I mean, why even have the guy win the title if he’s just going to lose it four weeks later? 

Needless to say, it was a total buzz-kill to see Ryder at the top of the mountain, only for him to fall off of it shortly thereafter. 

But there is a silver lining in every situation, and the silver lining in this one is that Ryder had to lose his United States Championship for storyline purposes. 

Sure, there were ways to keep the title on Ryder and still have him involved in the angle between John Cena and Kane. But the United States Championship is probably the least important aspect of whatever it is that is happening between Ryder, Cena, Kane and Eve Torres. 

There is something much, much bigger going on here. 

Exactly what that is, no one can be sure of. But in order to continue the storyline between Kane and Cena, Ryder needed to lose his title because, in many ways, he is the centerpiece of Cena’s “embrace the hate” storyline. 

It’s becoming quite clear that Kane is using Ryder as bait, a pawn in a little game that he calls “embrace the hate.” 

The idea behind Kane targeting Ryder is to create some tension between Ryder/Eve and Cena, as was evidenced by the fact that Eve blamed Cena for Kane’s attack on Ryder on this week’s episode of Raw. 

So far, Kane’s plan is working. And without Ryder losing the United States title, that wouldn’t have been the case. 

Everything that Kane has been doing is having a domino effect that is slowly but surely ripping Cena and Ryder apart: Kane attacks Ryder, Ryder gets hurt, Ryder loses his title, Ryder has a match with Kane (with a stipulation that if Cena interferes, Ryder never gets a US title rematch), Ryder gets hurt again, Eve blames Cena for Ryder’s injuries and then Cena starts losing his cool because he was just trying to do the right thing (by listening to Ryder and staying out of his match with Kane). 

Now, just think about it: Would this all have made as much sense if Ryder had retained the United States Championship? 

Absolutely not. 

While I realize that some fans may be upset by the fact that Ryder lost his belt and has now been written off TV for the time being, we have to look at the bigger picture here and realize that Ryder’s loss is certainly not the end of the world. 

I’m sure some people out there would rather see Ryder still competing and holding the United States Championship, but thanks to his title loss, he’s now got a bigger role on Raw than he ever would have otherwise. 

Ryder is the glue that is holding the feud between Kane and Cena together, and if we can just have a little patience, I think we’ll see that his title loss will pay off big-time in the long run.

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