Roman Reigns’ positive COVID-19 test forced WWE to make big changes to their upcoming storylines. There were plans to do something at Day 1 to set up Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns at WrestleMania. Lesnar walked out as WWE Champion and it looks like his next big match will be against Bobby Lashley but the Reigns vs. Lesnar plans are still in place for Mania.
During the Bryan and Vinny Show, Bryan Alvarez confirmed that the original plan was for Big E to retain the WWE Championship at Day 1. This confirms what was on the image that was posted and then quickly deleted by the @WWEonFOX account last night.
“Going into this show, Big E was coming out the Champion,” Alvarez said. “And so Big E losing the title was a direct result of Roman getting COVID and having to scramble to come up with a new idea.”
Alvarez then gave some informed speculation based on what people in the company believe is going to happen at Mania. Alvarez also made it clear that he does not have it 100 percent confirmed but he believes that WWE is going to build towards a champion vs. champion match at Mania in Dallas.
Alvarez said, “My presumption [and] I don’t have this 100 percent confirmed. What people have told me they believe is what’s going on here. Here’s the thing with WWE, everybody. When there’s a storyline involving Roman and Brock, the people that know where this is going are Roman, Brock and Vince and probably Paul Heyman and maybe Bruce Prichard. I can talk to 100 people there and 100 of them would tell me, ‘I think this is what’s happening but I don’t know for sure.’ But I think that the idea here is that they are doing champion vs. champion at WrestleMania. Roman would be the SmackDown Champion, Brock would be the Raw Champion. Either a unification match or just champion vs. champion like they do at Survivor Series.”
Alvarez said he doesn’t know what the big angle was supposed to be for Lesnar and Reigns at Day 1 but something was planned to set up their WrestleMania match and Big E was supposed to retain his title. Alvarez added, “All I know is that Big E was going to leave as champion until all of this happened so that’s what happened.”
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