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.
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