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Elias, Daniel Bryan Advance in WWE Intercontinental Title Tournament

Two lucky WWE Superstars advanced in a tournament last night to come closer to winning the prestigious Intercontinental Championship on WWE Friday Night Smackdown. WWE announced the tournament earlier this week after stripping the title from Sami Zayn, who has chosen to take WWE up on their generous offer of staying home during the pandemic. On Smackdown, WWE revealed the brackets as two quarterfinal matches took place.

One of those matches was a twenty-minute five-star classic between two excellent ring technicians, and the other was a match between Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak. Unfortunately, in the aforementioned classic, The Chadster's favorite wrestler, Baron Corbin, did not advance. Instead, Elias got his revenge on King Corbain and went on to the semifinal spot, where he'll face the winner of AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura. On the other side of the brackets, Bryan defeated Gulak to move on to face the winner of Jeff Hardy vs. Sheamus.

As for who will win the ultimate prize, the WWE Intercontinental Championship, that remains to be seen. However, Michael Cole mentioned repeatedly throughout the night how the big news of the tournament is that AJ Styles has set his sights on the one belt in WWE that has always eluded him may offer a bit of foreshadowing as to the eventual winner. Former champion Sami Zayn, however, did not appreciate the five-star classic by Corbin and Elias, or even Bryan and Gulak's pretty decent match. Zayn tweeted, "I am the Intercontinental Champion. Period. With the exception of Shinsuke, these men have no self-respect, and it says a lot about them that they were willing to participate in this tournament, to begin with. Disappointed in all of them." The underlying message of Zayn's tweet: "This is a work, fools, so stop being so outraged that WWE stripped me of the title."

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