When Roman Reigns got COVID-19 in January 2022, ahead of Day 1, WWE came up with the idea to unify the WWE Championship and Universal Title with Reigns beating Brock Lesnar for the WWE Title at WrestleMania 38. WWE did consider having the titles split up last year by WrestleMania 39, but ended up being nixed. WWE had plans made after Mania to split the title, with Raw getting its own title, which ended up leading to the World Heavyweight title being brought back.
It was announced on WWE Friday Night SmackDown that the company will unify the Women’s Tag Team Titles and NXT Women’s Tag Titles. In two weeks on SmackDown, NXT champions Isla Dawn and Alba Fyre will battle main roster champions Shayna Baszler and Ronda Rousey.
On Friday’s SmackDown, Raw Women’s Champion Asuka was given a new ‘Women’s Title’ that looks like Reigns’ new title belt, but with a white strap.
Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select reported that the name was changed to clean things up due to the Raw-SmackDown situation because of the Draft. WWE wanted Asuka’s title to look like Reigns’ to help portray it on an even playing field. Rhea Ripley’s championship will be receiving some other sort of adjustment, with it either being given a new name or design.
The report noted that one point of frustration within the company was “a simple misuse of the term ‘undisputed’ in two cases. Roman Reigns’ title is being referred to as an undisputed title despite Seth Rollins being a world champion. Asuka’s new championship has “undisputed” on the front of it, despite Rhea Ripley also being a women’s champion.”
A higher-up in WWE noted said, “that’s admittedly confusing. I don’t know why there is an insistence on doing that, and a lot of people have brought that up and it’s been dismissed.”
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