Monday Night Raw will have a world champion once again. Following the WWE Draft, which saw Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns become exclusive to WWE SmackDown, it was confirmed that the newly-introduced WWE World Heavyweight Championship would be contested for on the red brand. WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque previously noted that the inaugural champion would be crowned at the upcoming WWE Night of Champions premium live event, but details surrounding how Raw would get to that point remained unknown.
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Speaking at the WWE Backlash press conference, Triple H revealed that mini tournaments will go down on WWE TV next week.
“Starting after Backlash, this Monday night on Raw, we will begin a World Heavyweight Championship tournament. It will be across both brands,” Triple H said. “On Monday Night Raw, there will be two triple threat matches with the winners facing each other later than night to determine a winner for Monday Night Raw. That Friday on SmackDown, the same thing will happen. Two triple threat matches will take place. Those winners will face each other at the end of SmackDown to determine a winner there. Those two winners from Raw and SmackDown will then go on to Night of Champions where one of them will be crowned the new World Heavyweight Champion.”
WWE SmackDown‘s inclusion in the WWE World Heavyweight Title tournament raises some questions, as the fresh prize has been emphasized to be exclusive to Mondays. That said, if a SmackDown star emerges victorious in the end, it is likely that he will simply migrate to Raw.
It’s worth noting that WWE’s plans for this new title mirror those for the WWE Universal Championship when it was first introduced in Summer 2016. WWE held two triple threat matches on an episode of Monday Night Raw, which saw Finn Balor and Roman Reigns pick up the Ws. From there, Balor met Reigns in the main event of that Raw in a singles match, which he won, marking a rare clean one-on-one loss for the big dog. Balor then went on to beat Raw‘s hand-picked No.1 Contender Seth Rollins at WWE SummerSlam to become the first WWE Universal Champion.
There is no word on which stars will be involved in the WWE World Heavyweight Title triple threat matches, but the likes of Balor, Rollins, Shinsuke Nakamura and others have been recently rumored to be early picks to win the gold.
