Roman Reigns’ drug test failure changed WWE SummerSlam plans

Roman Reigns suspension in July changed a bunch of plans for SummerSlam. Finn Balor was always scheduled to make his pay-per-view debut at SummerSlam but he was supposed to wrestle against Chris Jericho. Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins was originally scheduled to be the title match for the show.

I had wondered why they kept the most credible title on Smackdown instead of keeping it on Raw. Well, as it turns out, Raw was supposed to get the title that is now on Smackdown and the newly created title (Universal title) was supposed to be on Smackdown. AJ Styles was supposed to win the Smackdown title. Due to Reigns drug test failure, plans changed and it was decided that another babyface (Balor) would be put in a top match (against Rollins) and Reigns would be moved down the card (against Rusev) as punishment.

AJ Styles is set to face Dean Ambrose for the WWE World Championship (that is what they call it) at the WWE Backlash event next month.

News from The Wrestling Observer website was used in this post. For more on this story please visit WrestlingObserver.com. Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez’ WrestlingObserver.com is the leading source for professional wrestling news. Click here for subscription information. Members get exclusive access to insider news from Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez, daily audio shows, breaking news audio, the Wrestling Observer newsletter, newsletter archives, thousands of hours of archived radio shows, and much more.

Related Articles

Stay Connected

1,245,221FansLike
275,328FollowersFollow
150,000SubscribersSubscribe
- Advertisement -