WWE Day 1 PPV Update – Universal Championship Match Announced

The Universal Championship will be on the line at WWE’s Day 1 pay-per-view with Roman Reigns set to defend the title against his long-time rival Brock Lesnar.

The WWE Day 1 pay-per-view takes place on January 1st in Atlanta and the Reigns/Lesnar rematch was announced last night on Smackdown. It was Brock Lesnar’s return to Smackdown after being suspended following the October 22nd edition of Smackdown.

A big reason why Lesnar was furious on October 22nd is because one day earlier at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, Reigns benefitted from cheating tactics to barely beat Lesnar in their Universal Championship match.

On last night’s Smackdown, Lesnar did a promo about how he was back to win the Universal Championship. The fans liked that, but Sami Zayn interrupted Lesnar’s promo (which takes a lot of guts) and let Brock know that Sami was the number one contender to the Universal Title. Sami was telling the truth because he won a battle royal last week on Smackdown to earn the next Universal Title shot against Reigns. That led to Lesnar using his veteran savvy to convince Zayn to challenge Reigns for the Universal Title on last night’s Smackdown. Zayn reluctantly agreed only after he slapped Lesnar on the chest and Lesnar physically threatened him.

After Sami Zayn made his entrance for the main event, he spoke about how he was going to beat Reigns for the Universal Championship and Zayn thought Lesnar was on his side. Instead, Lesnar made his way down to the ring and destroyed Zayn. Lesnar hit Zayn with multiple German Suplexes to take Zayn on a trip to “Suplex City” and then Lesnar delivered the devastating F5 twice. Lesnar propped up Zayn in the turnbuckle to make it look like Zayn was ready for his match.

Following Lesnar’s destruction of Zayn, Roman Reigns defended his Universal Championship against Zayn. The bell rang, Reigns hit a Spear and then applied the Guillotine Choke. Zayn tapped out to give Reigns the win after about 14 seconds.

Reigns and Lesnar did not appear on Smackdown at the same time last night. Lesnar is advertised to appear next week on Smackdown in Los Angeles, however, so there could be some fireworks on next week’s show.

Another match that was set up for Day 1 is The Usos defending the Smackdown Tag Team Titles against The New Day. That’s because Jimmy Uso cost King Woods his match against Jey Uso via disqualification. After the match, Woods and New Day partner Kofi Kingston cleaned house while The Usos retreated. In a backstage interview, The New Day made it clear they’re getting a Smackdown Tag Team Title match at Day 1 on January 1. The match was made official by WWE on Saturday.

That means the WWE Day 1 PPV lineup looks like this right now:

WWE Universal Championship: Roman Reigns (c) vs. Brock Lesnar

WWE Championship: Big E (c) vs. Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens

Smackdown Tag Team Championships: The Usos (c) vs. The New Day

You can watch WWE Day 1 streaming LIVE on New Year’s Day, Saturday, Jan. 1 at 8 ET / 5 PT on WWE Peacock in the United States and WWE Network everywhere else.