{"id":110987,"date":"2022-03-04T20:28:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-05T01:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=110987"},"modified":"2022-03-04T20:28:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-05T01:28:04","slug":"ricochet-wwe-intercontinental-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/03\/04\/ricochet-wwe-intercontinental-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"#AndNEW: Ricochet Wins WWE Intercontinental Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/03\/04\/preview-wwe-smackdown-ronda-rousey-action\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong><em>Friday Night SmackDown<\/em><\/strong><\/a> opened with <strong>Sami Zayn<\/strong> defending the Intercontinental Championship against <strong>Ricochet<\/strong>. In the weeks leading up to this match, Zayn has been embroiled in a feud with <strong>Johnny Knoxville<\/strong> of <em>Jackass<\/em> fame. In fact, their most recent encounter became physical, with Knoxville being laid out by WWE&#8217;s resident conspiracy theorist. This particular grudge proved to be the source of bad karma for Zayn, however, leading into this title defense. Ricochet ended the match by winning his first Intercontinental Championship.<\/p>\n<p>Zayn seemed to have the match at hand. However, Knoxville made his way up the ramp, taunting his rival. Knoxville didn&#8217;t step into the ring, only standing at ringside as Zayn mouthed off to him. However, this gave Ricochet the opportunity he needed. He caught Zayn with a hurricanrana into a pinning attempt. One pinfall later and Ricochet captured the Intercontinental Championship, leaving Knoxville pleasantly surprised and the former champion stunned.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We&#39;ve got a new Intercontinental Champion!!!!<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SmackDown<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ICTitle?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ICTitle<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KingRicochet?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@KingRicochet<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/mcUUqfhsoE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/mcUUqfhsoE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1499917111157792769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 5, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Ricochet Wins the Intercontinental Championship<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>What to Know Following Title Change on SmackDown<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>As mentioned earlier, this win marks the first time that Ricochet has held the WWE Intercontinental Championship. Furthermore, it&#8217;s his first title victory in nearly 3 years, previously winning the United States Championship in June of 2019. It&#8217;s also worth noting that Ricochet is a former NXT North American Champion, having won the title in August of 2018. Now that Ricochet is the new Intercontinental Championship, WWE fans should expect him to hold onto his newly won title before defending it at <strong><em>WrestleMania<\/em><\/strong> later this April.<\/p>\n<p>[pickup_prop id=&#8221;18867&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s edition of Friday Night SmackDown opened with Sami Zayn defending the Intercontinental Championship against Ricochet. In the weeks leading up to this match, Zayn has been embroiled in a feud with Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame. In fact, their most recent encounter became physical, with Knoxville being laid out by WWE&#8217;s resident conspiracy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":110990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,26,3],"tags":[8270,70,106,9297],"class_list":["post-110987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-wwe-universe","tag-johnny-knoxville","tag-ricochet","tag-sami-zayn","tag-wwe-intercontinental-championship"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}