Why WWE Pulled Sami Zayn vs. Aleister Black From SummerSlam

Over the last several weeks, WWE television was building toward a Sami Zayn vs. Aleister Black […]

August 8, 2019, 2:58pm

Over the last several weeks, WWE television was building toward a Sami Zayn vs. Aleister Black match at SummerSlam this weekend.

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In fact, Zayn himself said it. During the July 30th edition of SmackDown, Zayn challenged Black to a bout. He noted that he was going to “expose” Black and said that he would do it “at SummerSlam.”

However, changes were made and the match ended up happening this past Tuesday night during SmackDown Live. That doesn’t necessarily mean that WWE won’t add the match again to SummerSlam at the last minute, but a new report sheds light on why the match happened Tuesday night at all.

As was reported Tuesday afternoon, Vince McMahon wasn’t satisfied with the script for SmackDown heading into the show and completely re-wrote the broadcast on short notice just hours before going live on the USA Network.

According to Wrestling Observer R adio, after McMahon’s re-write, the show was still an hour short of being complete. In need of content for the show, Zayn vs. Black was added at the last minute.

Meltzer explained:

“The deal with Aleister Black and Sami Zayn was when Vince showed up and didn’t like Smackdown and he tore the whole show apart…when he was done with the stuff he didn’t like and then changing the main event, they had an hour to fill. It was, ‘Well, what can we do with this hour? Let’s put the Aleister Black match with Sami Zayn on. So that was one of the things they did to fill the hole. So they took that off the PPV. That’s the reason that’s off the PPV.”

This wasn’t the only match pulled from SummerSlam this week, as WWE decided to do the women’s tag team championship match on RAW so as to give the women more time to work and not have the match (which ended up being a title change) get lost in the midst of so many other big matches on Sunday night.

The card for SummerSlam is reported to be “fluid,” so we wouldn’t be surprised to see matches added at the last second (perhaps even another Zayn/Black bout). As things stand right now, here is the card for this Sunday night’s WWE SummerSlam PPV event: