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WWE News: Worlds Collide Event Replacing NXT Takeover During Royal Rumble Weekend

TJR Wrestling

The WWE plan of running NXT Takeover events during pay-per-view weekends involving the “Big Four” PPVs is apparently ending at Royal Rumble 2020 in Houston.

It was reported by PWInsider and Pro Wrestling Sheet that WWE is planning to run a Worlds Collide event instead of NXT Takeover. The Worlds Collide events have taken place at events like WrestleMania Axxess earlier this year. The theme behind those shows is that wrestlers from different WWE rosters will face off in matches you don’t normally see since they are a part of different brands.

If you go to WWE’s Royal Rumble travel packages page, you can see right there on the page that Worlds Collide will take place on Saturday, January 25, 2020.

The Worlds Collide event will take place at the Toyota Center in Houston, so they are going with the bigger arena venue for Worlds Collide instead of a smaller arena. It will likely air live on WWE Network as well.

There’s also a change in the way WWE is doing the Royal Rumble PPV weekend because Houston will only be holding the Worlds Collide and Royal Rumble. The Wrestling Observer reports that Dallas will get Smackdown on January 24 and San Antonio will get Raw on January 27.

That means the 2020 Royal Rumble schedule will look like this:

Friday, January 24, 2020 – Smackdown on FOX in Dallas, TX

Saturday, January 25, 2020 – Worlds Collide on WWE Network in Houston, TX

Sunday, January 26, 2020 – Royal Rumble on WWE Network @ Minute Maid Park in Houston, TX

Monday, January 27, 2020 – Raw on USA Network in San Antonio, TX

What does this mean for NXT Takeover shows? We don’t know right now other than the next NXT Takeover event is NXT Takeover Wargames on Saturday, November 23 in Chicago.

Perhaps WWE feels like Takeover events could do well on their own and maybe they’ll want to run it in another month like February or March. Now that NXT Takeover is on USA Network starting on September 18, they might choose to run more Takeover events. Right now, WWE runs five Takeover shows, but they could opt to go with six per year. It’s expected that will be announced in the near future.