Bad Blood’s Main Event Revealed: Is WWE Valuing Star Power Over Storyline?

Two of WWE’s biggest storylines in the modern era are writing massive chapters at WWE Bad Blood. After eight months of trash talk and two bouts with bloodshed, CM Punk and Drew McIntyre are set to culminate their rivalry inside Hell in a Cell. Nearly three years since their paths first crossed and two WWE WrestleMania main events later, WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns are set to join forces for the first time to take on The Bloodline’s Solo Sikoa and Jacob Fatu. These two titanic tussles have boosted WWE Bad Blood to feeling much bigger than a typical B-tier premium live event, but they have also presented a problem: which match gets the main event spot?

Report: WWE Bad Blood Main Event Revealed

The Bloodline’s premium live event parking spot has not changed.

As reported by Fightful Select, WWE has internally scheduled WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns vs. Solo Sikoa and Jacob Fatu to main event WWE Bad Blood. There is no word on how the rest of the card is currently organized.

Rhodes and Reigns vs. Sikoa and Fatu has had the headlining spot “as of last week,” meaning things could still shift around come the day of the premium live event. It’s worth noting that WWE once scheduled Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair for the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship to headline WWE WrestleMania 39 Night 1 but eventually pivoted to The Usos vs. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships closer to the day of.

WWE Bad Blood’s Embarrassment of Riches

Fans have pushed for CM Punk and Drew McIntyre’s Hell in a Cell match, a stipulation typically reserved for the definitive conclusion to a blood feud, to close WWE Bad Blood. Punk and McIntyre’s story has been building since WWE Royal Rumble in January and their televised segments have drawn Attitude Era-level viewership spikes.

Rhodes and Reigns have been intertwined for nearly three years now and are largely responsible for the two most successful WWE WrestleMania events of all time. That said, their story is currently in an epilogue stage, operating somewhere that is long before their next singles clash.

WWE has instigated this booking before, where star power takes precedence over story. WWE Survivor Series 2011 comes to mind, a show that saw John Cena and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson vs. The Miz and R-Truth headline over CM Punk’s official coronation as WWE Champion. WWE Over The Limit 2012 also saw this, when Cena vs. Monday Night Raw general manager John Laurinaitis in a glorified comedy match got the top spot over Punk vs. Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship. Rhodes and Reigns’s story against The Bloodline is far stronger than those aforementioned examples, but it does bear the question of whether they are in that spot because their story is the biggest on the card or if it is more so because of their star power.

WWE Bad Blood goes down on Saturday, October 5th.