Details On WWE World Title Match On Raw Being Changed
There are some more details on what was changed regarding a World Title match on Raw that never happened.
The WWE World Heavyweight Title was supposed to be on the line at the beginning of the June 19th episode of Raw. The World Champion Seth “Freakin” Rollins issued an open challenge for his title. Rollins was in his ring gear looking ready to go when Finn Balor attacked Rollins from behind to prevent a match from happening.
Finn Balor attacked Seth Rollins because Balor is challenging for the World Heavyweight Title at Money in the Bank on July 1st, so Balor wanted to do a cheap attack to weaken the champion. Balor would go on to do the Coup de Grace (double foot stomp) to Seth’s ribs repeatedly. Rollins never got to do the title defense that he was planning to do.
It was reported earlier in the week that WWE’s Executive Chairman Vince McMahon made the change because he felt like Balor needed to get some heat on Rollins to build up to their match at Money in the Bank. While Paul “Triple H” Levesque runs the creative team as the Chief Content Officer, Vince has been known to edit things as he sees fit.
In an update on the story, Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp reports that the man that was going to challenge for the World Tite was Tommaso Ciampa, who made his return to action after missing about nine months due to hip surgery.
The match between Rollins and Ciampa was supposed to get a lot of time, but it was changed a few hours before the show. Fightful confirmed it was a Vince McMahon decision while noting that they didn’t know if it was done to avoid having Ciampa lose his first match back. The report noted that “those around the match were clearly frustrated by the change.”
Instead of Ciampa facing Rollins, Ciampa beat his old friend The Miz in a singles match.
There are plans for Ciampa to reunite with his #DIY friend Johnny Gargano, who was backstage at Raw, but it hasn’t happened yet.
As for Rollins, he beat Bron Breakker in a great NXT Title match on NXT this past Tuesday. Balor attacked Rollins on that show too.
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