Finn Balor’s jump to SmackDown didn’t come out of a formal WWE draft. On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said WWE just wanted to get Balor away from Dominik Mysterio and JD McDonagh now that their Raw feud has run its course.
The move was announced on the June 1st Raw from the Inalpi Arena in Turin. McDonagh took the news as a chance to talk trash, claiming Balor won’t be missed and that Judgment Day would’ve ended his career if he’d stuck around.
“I never heard anything about a draft. The idea is they just want to get him away from Dominik Mysterio and JD. He beat JD, and if he stays on Raw, theoretically, how does he not work with those guys? So they just figured they’re done with that, they’re done with Finn Balor doing that, and they wanted to give him a fresh start, and there you go. I mean, that’s kind of a lot of times they do that, they just run a feud, it’s over, and it’s the nature, the nature of the feud is they just don’t want these guys interacting.”
That line closes out a long chapter. Balor’s Raw run with Judgment Day, alongside Damian Priest, Dominik Mysterio, and Rhea Ripley, led to multiple title reigns and played a central role in Mysterio’s rise.
The brand switch doesn’t pull Balor from the King of the Ring, though. He’s still in the right-side first-round match with Jey Uso, LA Knight, and Royce Keys, and the finals are set for Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia on June 27 — with a SummerSlam 2026 title shot waiting for both the King and Queen of the Ring winners. So he lands on Friday with something to do right away.
There’s plenty around him, too. SmackDown has Cody Rhodes as Undisputed WWE Champion, GUNTHER coming off his Clash in Italy title match with Rhodes, and other stars.
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