Jim Cornette Pans WWE World Title Tournament
A new WWE World Heavyweight Champion will be crowned at Night of Champions at the end of May but Jim Cornette is not a fan of the way the company is going about finding a new titleholder.
Triple H announced that a twelve-man tournament would take place to crown a new WWE World Champion with four triple threat matches acting as the quarter-finals.
On Raw Seth Rollins and Finn Balor came through their three-way matches to face off in a semi-final with Rollins booking his place at Night of Champions. The other two triple threat bouts will take place in SmackDown in Knoxville, Tennessee when Austin Theory faces Bobby Lashley and Sheamus while Rey Mysterio faces Edge and AJ Styles.
Speaking on The Jim Cornette Experience, the legendary manager took issue with the fact that the tournament features triple threat matches and also touched on a common complaint that SmackDown stars are featuring in a tournament for a Raw title:
“You’re gonna have to back up a minute because triple threat matches—I don’t want to bury one of the leads, but Jesus, we can’t even get a tournament with legitimate matches and eliminations among top people? We have to have this triple threat horsesh*t?
“But he just said, ‘Across both brands.’ Well, how does that work then if the guy’s exclusive to Raw? If one of the SmackDown people wins it that has just been drafted from Raw to SmackDown, then do they have to go back, or if they’ve been drafted and were already on SmackDown to begin with, they now automatically would go to Raw? Why are you giving SmackDown people a chance at a title that’s going to be exclusive to Raw to begin with?”
Reports have suggested that the reason why WWE is spreading the tournament out over SmackDown this week is due to a tough battle for TV ratings thanks to the NBA playoffs.