[SmackDown Spoilers] Breaking news as Ilja Dragunov announces unpopular decision regarding the future of the US Title Open Challenge

Ilja Dragunov has been one of the best parts of SmackDown ever since returning a couple of months ago. On the SmackDown tapings that will air a week from now, he made a highly unpopular announcement about the future of the US Title Open challenge.

*Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the December 26th edition of SmackDown. If you wish to avoid spoilers, please don't proceed*

Ilja Dragunov continued what Sami Zayn did, which was to successfully revive the concept of John Cena's open challenge from 2015. Between 2015 and 2025, a few superstars tried to bring back that spirit, but Sami Zayn was the first to successfully do so. In under 40 days, Zayn managed to have what many believed was the best US Title run in years. To honor him, Ilja Dragunov continued the open challenge, and to many, it has been the best part of SmackDown by far.

However, Ilja Dragunov was in a backstage segment with Carmelo Hayes on the December 26th episode, where he shockingly announced that the US Title Open Challenge is effectively closed.

This is going to be a highly unpopular decision among WWE fans, many of whom have been big fans of Dragunov's continuation of the open challenge. It has given the opportunity to stars like Tommaso Ciampa and Axiom among others, and now that SmackDown is going back to three hours, many would argue that it is especially important to keep the open challenge intact.

The overall quality of the product on SmackDown has been questioned for a while now, and it seems like WWE is aware of this as they recently had a shake-up of the creative team on the blue brand, which is still led by Road Dogg. Time will tell what the logic behind closing the open challenge was.

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Edited by Rohit Nath