WWE News: Andrade, Zelina Vega and Aleister Black Are Smackdown Superstars One Week After Being Moved to Raw
There have been more changes from WWE one week after the Superstar Shake-up.
If you watched last week’s edition of Raw then you saw Andrade and Zelina Vega were moved to the show. Andrade beat Intercontinental Champion Finn Balor in a non-title match that made it look like they would have a feud over the title. Then Balor was moved to Smackdown, so the win seemed pointless. However, now it appears as though Andrade is back on Smackdown Live according to Pro Wrestling Sheet. That means we might get that Balor vs. Andrade feud after all.
After a quick glance at WWE.com, you can see that Andrade (and Zelina) are listed on Smackdown now.
If you go to the WWE.com Superstars page and select Smackdown, you can see Andrade and Vega there. You will also see Aleister Black on there even though he was also announced as a Raw guy on Monday as well. That means the end of the Black/Ricochet tag team as well.
Why the move? The reason given to Pro Wrestling Sheet is that a decision was made by upper management in WWE following last week’s Superstar Shake-up editions of Raw and Smackdown.
There is a report on PWInsider claiming that WWE wanted to move Andrade and Vega back to Smackdown because Fox wants more Latino stars on Smackdown when the blue brand is on Fox in October and also on Fox Deportes.
There is more to the story here and that has to do with real-life relationships.
Andrade is dating Charlotte Flair and they have been a couple since the start of the year. It might have been before that, but that’s as far as back as I know. They publicly acknowledged their relationship during WrestleMania weekend. If you follow either of them on social media, they often posts photos and videos together. It’s great to see them happy. When the Superstar Shake-up happy, one of the things that people pointed out was Charlotte and Andrade were separated, which was a surprise especially since Charlotte is a main eventer and you would think WWE would try to keep her happy by keeping her boyfriend on the same brand.
As for Zelina Vega and Aleister Black, they were married late last year and WWE has kept all married couples on the same brand. That means that if Vega has to move because of Andrade then Black has to move too.
There is one couple that remains split up in the Superstar Shake-up and that’s Alexa Bliss and longtime boyfriend that might be her fiance Buddy Murphy, who is on Smackdown while Bliss is on Raw. They keep their relationship private, though, so it’s not known if they are still together or what’s going on there.
What we don’t know is if WWE will try to explain this in the storyline or if they will just continue as if Andrade, Vega and Black were on Smackdown the whole time without being moved to Raw last week.
It’s also expected that Samoa Joe will be a part of the Raw brand today, which was not announced last week because he was too sick to appear on TV.
TJR Thoughts: These moves made sense. As soon as Andrade was announced for Raw on Monday, I thought Flair would be moved to Raw too. She wasn’t, so there goes WWE sending Andrade back to Smackdown. It’s WWE, so don’t expect explanations. They don’t like doing that.
UPDATE: There’s another roster move because Cesaro is heading to Raw this week as well. More on that here.