General manager Mick Foley and Raw commissioner Stephanie McMahon announced the first ever WWE Universal Championship, dubbing it 'The Biggest Event of the Summer' and will be holding its first matchup at SummerSlam. First overall WWE draft pick Seth Rollins will be the Superstar contender for the new title.
After defeating Roman Reigns in WWE Raw, Finn Balor has earned his way to fight for the newly- created WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam and could potentially become its first title holder.
In their match at WWE Raw, Reigns and Balor both won Fatal 4-Way matches. Ultimately Balor won after doing Sling Blade and Coupe de Grace. Reigns said, when asked by Tom Phillips regarding the fight, that he 'respected Balor for the win'.
Finn Balor arguably made a huge leap from his debut to face a top tier pro wrestler in the face of Seth Rollins. Together, they will be the main event of the first WWE Universal Championship.
This scenario was not what they plan and expect to happen since the original plan was to have a fight between Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns.
"While the plan had been for WWE to create a new World title, the original plan for SummerSlam have changed. The original plan called for Rollins to face Roman Reigns for one of the World titles. Reigns' 30 day suspension for his first violation of the WWE Wellness Policy clearly changed those plans. It's being said that he is clearly in the doghouse after being pinned two nights in a row."
Finn Balor's unexpected win catapulted him to his first big event and fans speculated who could have made this possible for him. In an article by Bleacherreport, Triple H could be behind the 'instant push' Finn got. But the Wrestling Observer Newsletter disputed this claims on Twitter, noting that it was not Triple H.
SummerSlam will air live on Sunday, August 21 at 7pm on WWE Network.
