As noted on Tuesday night before SmackDown Live, there were a lot of changes made to the show. In fact, Dave Meltzer noted that Vince McMahon ripped up the script a few hours before the show and he rewrote everything.
At one point, the plan was for Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan to close out the show. There may have been other ideas batted around but they ultimately went with Daniel Bryan and Erick Rowan vs. Big E and Xavier Woods.
The original plan was for Roman Reigns to wrestle Daniel Bryan on Sunday at SummerSlam but that match has been pulled and Erick Rowan is the person being blamed for the forklift attack on Reigns last week. I’m told that the current plan is to reveal that Bryan instructed Rowan to attack Reigns last week and Bryan is supposed to be the person who was behind the wheel of the car during the attack on Monday at Raw. We’ll see if Vince McMahon sticks with that plan.
There’s no word on what Daniel Bryan’s “career-altering” announcement is about but that may have been dropped. The announcers did bring it up on commentary last night but with Vince McMahon constantly changing his mind on things, some storyline plans may never play out.
Bryan vs. Reigns is listed on upcoming live events so that feud will carry on at least until the Clash of Champions pay-per-view in September.