During the Rolling Loud Festival in Miami, it was announced by Trae Young from the Atlanta Hawks that WWE will kick off 2022 with a pay-per-view on New Year’s Day.
This may explain why the SmackDown event from Atlanta on September 17 was canceled and moved to Knoxville, TN.
You can see the video below of the announcement. In the clip below, SmackDown Women’s Champion introduces Trae Young and he makes the announcement.
As noted earlier, the crowd did not seem too thrilled to see WWE since they bought tickets to see a music festival. During the SmackDown broadcast, there was piped-in crowd noise to make it sound like fans at the festival were cheering. The audio below appears to have none of the piped-in noise.
UPDATE: WWE has deleted the tweet.
https://twitter.com/WWE/status/1418750847652188161
UPDATE 2: The video is back up.
Right after her win at #RollingLoud, @BiancaBelairWWE introduced @ATLHawks All-Star @TheTraeYoung to make an epic announcement…
WWE will host its first-ever New Year's Day pay-per-view event on Saturday, January 1 in Atlanta! pic.twitter.com/Ix22DQBldO
— WWE (@WWE) July 24, 2021