Backstage News On How Long WWE Planned New World Title
Following the introduction of a brand new WWE World Title, a new report sheds light on how long WWE has planned for this to happen.
Earlier this week, WWE announced that they were celebrating 60 years of the WWE Championship. The WWE Title was first won by “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers on April 25, 1963
On the April 24th edition of Raw, WWE’s Chief Operating Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque revealed a brand new WWE World Heavyweight Title.
It was announced by Triple H that since Roman Reigns holds the WWE and Universal Titles, the company decided to create a new World Heavyweight Title. In the WWE Draft that starts tonight, Reigns will go to either Raw or Smackdown and the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship will go with him. Whatever show Reigns isn’t on will get the new WWE World Heavyweight Title.
The winner of this new WWE World Heavyweight Title will be crowned at Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, May 27th.
Roman Reigns has been the WWE Universal Champion since August 30, 2020, which means he has held it for over 950 days. That Universal Title was created in 2016 when WWE re-started the WWE Draft/brand split that would see Raw and Smackdown each have a World Title. The Universal Title started on Raw but eventually got moved to Smackdown.
The main event of WrestleMania 38 in 2022 saw Reigns defend the Universal Title against the WWE Champion Brock Lesnar in a Winner Take All match. Reigns beat Lesnar to become the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion and has held both titles ever since.
In this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer revealed that the company planned to reveal a new World Title since WrestleMania 38 last year when Reigns combined the two titles into one.
“The idea of bringing back the second title dates back literally to when the titles were unified at the April 3, 2022, WrestleMania show in Dallas when Roman Reigns beat Brock Lesnar.”
“We had been told before the match that the company felt it needed two titles, but also based on the Mania stipulation, it had to wait a certain length of time before creating the second one.”
What isn’t known yet is whether Reigns will keep carrying around the WWE and Universal Titles or if he’ll just have one of them.