Battleground (2017)

The 2017 Battleground was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE, held exclusively for wrestlers from the promotion's main roster brand, SmackDown. It was the fifth annual Battleground and took place on July 23, 2017, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eight matches were contested at the event, including one match on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, Jinder Mahal defeated Randy Orton in the third-ever Punjabi Prison match to retain the WWE Championship. The ending of the match also saw a one-off surprise appearance by The Great Khali, who last performed in WWE in November 2014. In other prominent matches, Kevin Owens defeated AJ Styles to win his third United States Championship, John Cena defeated Rusev in a flag match, and in the opening bout, The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) defeated The Usos (Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso) to win the SmackDown Tag Team Championship. This was the final Battleground held until 2023. It was originally planned to return as a Raw-exclusive event in 2018, but following WrestleMania 34 in April that year, WWE discontinued brand-exclusive PPV and livestreaming events for the main roster, reducing the amount of these events produced per year, with Battleground's originally planned 2018 date and location given to Extreme Rules. In 2023, Battleground was reinstated as an annual livestreaming event for WWE's developmental brand, NXT.