RIYADH: WWE has announced that a tournament will be held with the finals to crown the world title-holder at Night of Champions in Jeddah on May 27. Although the championship will be exclusive to the Raw brand, it will have superstars from the SmackDown brand as well.
The announcement was made on Friday’s Backlash press conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the chief content officer for WWE, Paul Levesque, better known by his ring name Triple H, made the announcement that 12 of WWE’s top superstars will compete to determine the first man to hold the new prize. The tournament kicks off next week.
The tournament will be held across both the SmackDown and Raw programs. It will begin on Raw with two triple-threat matches, with a bout later that night to determine the show’s representative. The same will happen on SmackDown later to determine the blue brand’s representative. The winners will then wrestle at Night of Champions in the tournament finals to determine the world heavyweight champion.
WWE has not announced the Triple Threat participants.
With the WWE brand split, Triple H announced a new world heavyweight championship that will be exclusive to the red brand since SmackDown drafted the Undisputed Universal Champion Roman Reigns.
Many wrestling websites have held polls online to see who would be the fan favorite to be the inaugural world champion.
All websites have one superstar leading these polls. That WWE superstar is Seth Rollins. The former two-time WWE champion, two-time universal champion, two-time intercontinental champion, two-time US champion, 2014 “Money in the Bank” winner has been widely considered a favorite for the new world title due to his appeal and performance this year.
Another top candidate from wrestling website polls was the “American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes who won this year’s Royal Rumble match but fell short in dethroning and ending the WWE Undisputed Universal Champion Roman Reigns’ 978+ days, which is considered the sixth-longest world championship reign in the promotion’s history and the longest reign of any WWE championship since 1988.
