New Report Explains Why WWE Unified the WWE and Universal Championships, Then Created the World Heavyweight Championship

WWE’s decision to have Roman Reigns unify the WWE and Universal Championships into the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship back at WrestleMania 38 has shaped the course of WWE’s entire main event scene for the past 13 months. And, according to Fightful Select‘s Sean Ross Sapp, it was never originally a part of the company’s plan for Reigns’ run as “The Tribal Chief.” Fans will recall that WWE initially planned to have Reigns defend the Universal title against Brock Lesnar at the Day 1 pay-per-view in January 2022, only for Reigns to test positive for COVID-19 hours before the show. This wound up getting the ball rolling on a unification match, as Lesnar was immediately booked to win the WWE Championship and the Reigns/Lesnar match was rescheduled for WrestleMania in Dallas with both titles on the line. 

Since then, a number of reports about WWE’s plans to separate the two belts back into separate championships have popped up, most famously one involving a plan at Clash at the Castle that involved Austin Theory, the Money in the Bank contract and Tyson Fury that would’ve seen Drew McIntyre walk out of Cardiff, Wales, with the WWE Championship. That plan was apparently scrapped as WWE officials felt it was too complicated. 

But Sapp noted that internal documents from last year indicated that WWE was going to split the titles and have either Seth Rollins or McIntyre face Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 39 with the WWE Championship on the line. Sapp wrote, “Within a few weeks, plans were altered and the idea of splitting the titles were abandoned. We weren’t told how the titles were set to be split, but as of that time, Reigns’ opponent was ‘TBA.’” 

And we’ve now seen what that change of plans has resulted in. Rhodes failed to beat Reigns for the unified title in the WrestleMania main event and WWE opted to create the new World Heavyweight Championship in order to give Monday Night Raw a top prize that can be consistently featured again. Sapp also noted that the King and Queen of the Ring pay-per-view scheduled for May 27 in Jeddah was changed to Night of Champions in order to accommodate the new world title. A tournament for the championship is expected to begin soon and the finals will take place on that pay-per-view.

As for Rhodes, “The American Nightmare” confirmed in an interview with ComicBook this week that he’s open to pursuing this title even though his “story” is centered around the WWE Championship. 

“That’s the title that represents Raw. That’s the title that main events for Raw. That’s the title that is the franchise title for the USA network. So I can’t say I don’t want it. I can’t say that that’s not something that would be, if you look and revise your goals and say, ‘Okay, this is the route we have to go.’ Especially particularly with me being drafted to Monday Night Raw, and that might be more of a case of like I just said a story, a different story,” Rhodes said.