The WWE officially announced the 12 participants in the World Heavyweight Championship tournament on Sunday, beginning with this week’s episodes of Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown and culminating at Night of Champions on May 27 in Jeddah. The tournament will feature six wrestlers from Raw and six from SmackDown competing in a pair of triple-threat opening-round matches. The winners of those bouts will then face each other later that same night in the semifinals, meaning we’ll know which two wrestlers will be fighting for WWE’s next prize at the upcoming pay-per-view by late Friday night.
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Some of the names picked for the tournament have been frontrunners since the championship was introduced — Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes and Finn Balor, to name a few. Others, i.e. The Miz and Austin Theory, seemed to be filling space in order to lose early on. But then there are picks like AJ Styles, Edge and Shinsuke Nakamura who could, under the right circumstances, make it all the way to winning the gold. Let’s break down each participant and see who has the best shot at becoming a world champion!
1. Seth Rollins
Rollins has been positioned as the frontrunner to win the championship from the get-go, and it’s hard to argue against it. His run as “The Visionary” has evolved into some of the best work of his career, effectively turning him back into Raw’s top babyface during the back half of 2022. But without a rematch against Roman Reigns on the horizon, he was left to spin his wheels in feuds over the United States Championship before turning his attention to Logan Paul for WrestleMania season. Winning the tournament would not only give him the chance to reach his full potential with this character, but it would also give Rollins the opportunity at a do-over following his disastrous Universal Champion reign from back in 2019.
He’s also in a unique position that could help elevate the new title beyond the “consolation prize” label many have placed upon it. Given that he’s one of the few men Reigns can’t claim to have beaten as “The Tribal Chief,” WWE can position Rollins as a legitimate top champion on Raw and not just one of the many wrestlers who couldn’t get the job done against Reigns.
2. Shinsuke Nakamura
Not long after the WHC was introduced, a report dropped that Nakamura was viewed as a legitimate “outside the box” pick. Despite racking up accomplishments as a Royal Rumble winner and former United States, Intercontinental, NXT and tag team champion, Nakamura hasn’t had a major program on WWE’s main roster outside of his infamous WWE Championship feud with AJ Styles — which was five years ago. However, his recent match with Great Muta seemed to reignite WWE’s interest in pushing him as a top international star and crowning him as the first World Heavyweight Champion would give Raw’s main event scene a significantly different feel compared to SmackDown.
It’s by no means a bad idea and could give the Red Brand a legitimately exciting summer to look forward to. But it’ll all come down to execution.
3. Cody Rhodes
We’ve already talked at length about why Rhodes winning this title is a bad idea, from derailing his momentum to immediately positioning the title as a silver medal compared to Reigns’ championship. If there’s any bright side to him being announced for the bracket it’s that the finish to Backlash’s main event all but guarantees Brock Lesnar will cost Rhodes and set up their rematch for Night of Champions.
4. Finn Balor
This one is hard to call. Triple H clearly still loves Balor — booking his second NXT run and letting him thrive as a member of Judgement Day makes that obvious — but neither that nor Judgement Day’s popularity have led to many big wins for “The Prince.” He’s 1-4 in televised singles matches since the start of the year, including his big Hell in a Cell loss to Edge at WrestleMania, but he’d make the perfect foil for Seth Rollins in the second round of the tournament on Monday night.
5. AJ Styles
It’s been five years since AJ Styles held a world championship. That feels like way too long.
6. Edge
Now this one is interesting. When Edge first made his surprise return to WWE, it seemed like giving him a 12th reign as world champion was an inevitability. But between Reigns’ chokehold over the Universal title, the decision to unify the Universal and WWE belts and the habit of letting Edge’s feuds drag on a bit too long, the idea that we’d see “The Rated-R Superstar” reign supreme one more time started to vanish.
But this new title changes the equation. There’s no obvious frontrunner from the SmackDown side of the bracket to make it to Night of Champions, Edge has plenty of history with the previous version of the World Heavyweight Championship and it’d give him a chance to run back his old feud with Rollins. His pseudo-part-timer status might work against him, but there’s definitely a story here.
7. Damian Priest
Priest managed to go from being the Judgement Day’s fourth-string afterthought to one of the hottest names on Raw in a matter of weeks thanks to his Backlash match with Bad Bunny. How much that will actually matter in this tournament remains to be seen, but having him win his opening-round triple threat and then lose to Rollins in the second round would make for an admirable performance.
8. Bobby Lashley
While looking at SmackDown’s updated roster following the 2023 WWE Draft, Lashley immediately stood out as someone WWE will likely pair up with Roman Reigns for another successful title defense on pay-per-view. That could come as early as Night of Champions, so Lashley likely isn’t getting very far here.
9. Sheamus
For as great as he’s been lately, WWE seems to only be interested in having Sheamus chase after SmackDown’s midcard titles. That could spell doom for Theory’s US title run in the near future but doesn’t give “The Celtic Warrior” great odds in this tourney.
10. Rey Mysterio
For as popular as the LWO is, they seemingly can’t buy a win on TV lately. Mysterio’s latest attempt at winning a world championship again will be no exception and it still feels like his program with Dominik isn’t quite over.
11. Austin Theory
Theory’s current run as United States Champion all but guarantees he won’t make it out of the opening rounds on this week’s SmackDown. But, given Vince McMahon’s return to the Creative team and his favoritism towards Theory, there’s always a chance that they’ll threaten us with making him a double champion.
12. The Miz
While he is a two-time WWE Champion, WWE has relegated “The A-Lister” to being the butt of “tiny balls” jokes for the better part of a year. If he gets out of the opening round, it’ll be a shocker.
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