A new report has shed light on why the planned WWE Universal Championship match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar has been moved to the inaugural Day One event.
Reigns and Lesnar faced off at the Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia in October with Reigns retaining his title with more than a little help from the rest of The Bloodline.
Lesnar has recently returned to WWE television and has his sights set on Reigns once more as he hopes to become the WWE Universal Champion for the fourth time.
Dave Meltzer on his Wrestling Observer Radio recently gave some insight into why the battle between SmackDown’s two behemoths had been moved from January’s traditional pay-per-view Royal Rumble to the new Day One event taking place on New Year’s Day 2022:
“The deal is Day 1 is obviously a Nick Khan idea for the idea of January 1st and the idea is not just this year doing it. The idea is that this will be a regular thing, a regular holiday tradition for WWE, January 1st pay-per-view. Historically, the December pay-per-view has never done well. It’s always been one of the worst.”
“[…] When it comes to a holiday 1st or a January 1st show, a show like that historically either will do terrible because it’s on a holiday if the lineup is not intriguing or it will do great because it’s a holiday and holiday shows when you have a great lineup historically do very very well.”
“So, to establish this as a traditional big show and the idea is to make this one of the biggest shows of the year, you need to establish it and Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns is the strongest match they got so that’s the match that they chose to establish it.”
“The feeling is that Royal Rumble didn’t need it. They are trying to establish January 1st as one of the big shows of the year and so they are going to put their best match in there on the big show of the year.”
Meltzer then adds that no matter how the match at Day One turns out he expects to see Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns going at it at WrestleMania, which would be the two superstar’s third meeting on The Grandest Stage Of Them All:
“It is not going to be the last Roman Reigns-Brock Lesnar match. Obviously, they are still planned for WrestleMania so that’s the basic gist of it.”