Ali, Chad Gable Advance in the King of the Ring Tournament, Updated Bracket

The WWE King of the Ring tournament continued this week on SmackDown Live with the final set of [...]

By Ryan Droste

The WWE King of the Ring tournament continued this week on SmackDown Live with the final set of first round matches.

In the first bout of the night, Ali took on Buddy Murphy in a highly anticipated match. Given the great matches these two have had in the past, expectations were high. With the limited amount of television time they were given, these two met those expectations.

Murphy continued his streak of very good matches on SmackDown in recent weeks, a man who has received a ton of television time with his involvement in the Reigns/Bryan/Rowan storyline.

At the same time, Ali has done well after reintroducing himself to the WWE audience with some great promo videos that he helped write himself.

In the end, Ali hit a fantastic looking tornado DDT and followed that up with a 450 Splash for the victory. Check it out below.

Later during SmackDown, we got former tag team partners colliding as Chad Gable took on Shelton Benjamin. This match has been built over the last couple of weeks with a series of (somewhat awkward) backstage segments, mostly consisting of Benjamin rolling his eyes or sarcastically reacting to Gable's interviews.

The two had a short but solid match. Gable won with a spectacular move, reversing a powerbomb into a Sunset Flip Bomb for the win.

With the first round now in the books, the quarterfinals are set. Each WWE brand has four competitors left in the tournament, setting-up the remaining matches. They are:

RAW

Samoa Joe vs. Ricochet

Cedric Alexander vs. Baron Corbin

SMACKDOWN

Elias vs. Ali

Andrade vs. Chad Gable

The remaining King of the Ring bracket looks as follows:

KOTRBracketAug27
(Photo: WWE)

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