WWE.com officially changed up the banners for Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown on Monday, highlighting the top six wrestlers from each show. While it’s not the end-all-be-all of the WWE hierarchy, the banners often give a good glimpse into which stars the company views as the top talent on a given roster. And now that the WWE Draft is over and the WWE Brand Split has seemingly been reinstated (at least for now), these two lists actually carry some weight. You can also see which wrestlers may have moved up or down the card based on what changes are made to the banner. Let’s take a closer look.
The most-recent banner for Raw featured Bobby Lashley, Bayley, Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair, Edge and Rhea Ripley. As for the Blue Brand, the last banner had Roman Reigns & The Usos, Drew McIntyre, Ronda Rousey and Liv Morgan. At first glance, you’ll notice the new banners have a lot of the same names just in different positions as a result of the WWE Draft. But it’s what has changed where things get interesting.
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The biggest change is removing Jimmy and Jey Uso from the banner in favor of Solo Sikoa, which mirrors the ongoing drama within The Bloodline that was reflected during Backlash this past weekend. Now that the Usos have lost their Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships they have seemingly lost favor with “The Tribal Chief” despite staying loyal to him throughout the Sami Zayn saga. And between his interference at WrestleMania 39, his victory at Backlash and his consistent wins on TV, Sikoa has effectively established himself as Reigns’ right-hand man. And if Reigns chooses to cut ties with The Usos for not pulling their weight, it’ll likely be Sikoa who issues the first shot.
The rest of SmackDown’s banner consists of Bianca Belair — still on her record-setting championship reign — United States Champion Austin Theory and Lashley. “The All Mighty” could easily challenge either Theory or Reigns for their respective titles at some point in the coming months.
Meanwhile, the Raw banner isn’t too surprising. Cody Rhodes and Rhea Ripley are unsurprisingly front and center and are flanked by Seth Rollins (the frontrunner for the new World Heavyweight Championship) and Becky Lynch. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens have also been promoted to faces of the show given their status as the new Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions, though they’ll reportedly defend their titles on both brands for the foreseeable future. The biggest removal from either banner is former WWE Champion Drew McIntyre, though his future within WWE is reportedly up in the air.
