Many fans were scratching their heads when the WWE announced SmackDown stars would be included in the World Heavyweight Championship tournament. After all, the title is set to be Monday Night RAW’s top championship. More on this story, below.
The Reason SmackDown Stars Are In WWE World Title Tournament
The Undisputed Universal Champion is Roman Reigns, and he’s exclusive to SmackDown. A new championship was recently unveiled by the company’s CCO Triple H and he also announced a tournament to determine RAW’s inaugural new top champion.
With that being said, it was recently revealed that the tourney will include talent from both the Red and Blue brand. Seth Rollins was RAW’s winner this week, moving to the finals that will determine the new champ.
This match is taking place at Night of Champions on Saturday, May 27th in Saudi Arabia. It’ll be interesting to see who Rollins’ opponent will be as AJ Styles, Sheamus, Rey Mysterio, Austin Theory, Bobby Lashley, and Edge are in the running for SD.
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio recently talks about this tourney and Blue brand stars competing. He notes that the tournament’s goal is to increase TV ratings that are going up against the NBA playoffs.
Bryan Alvarez also mentions that RAW was “loaded” to compete with the NBA. Meltzer adds all three shows (RAW, SmackDown, and NXT) were booked “100%” this week o save viewers from switching over to the playoffs.
He notes that a “normal” show would do poor numbers. Dave states that AEW knows the same thing.
This does seem like a good explanation as to why Blue brand talents are included in the WWE World Heavyweight title tourney, but could this mean a SmackDown star could win the championship?
Only time will tell. This Friday, SmackDown will determine which star goes to the finals against Seth Rollins.
