A new report has claimed that WWE never actually planned to follow through on the Tag Team Title unification match at WrestleMania Backlash.
Coming out of WrestleMania 38, The Usos were the SmackDown Tag Team Champions, while RK-Bro remained Raw Tag Team Champions. The event proved to be very profitable for The Bloodline in general, as Roman Reigns defeated Brock Lesnar to become Undisputed Universal Champion.
This meant that following the event, The Bloodline were looking for new ground to conquer. In search of a fresh challenge, Reigns dispatched The Usos to unify the tag team division. With fresh orders ringing in their ears Jimmy and Jey headed to Raw and the challenge was made and then accepted.
However, despite the match being confirmed, and advertised as such, at the contract signing between the two teams, Reigns decided to make his presence felt and tore up the contract. In the ensuring brawl, Drew McIntyre ran down to assist RK-Bro and a huge six-man tag team match was announced for WrestleMania Backlash in the place of the unification bout.
Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer has claimed that WWE never intended to follow through on the unification match, noting that the six-man tag was always the plan. This ties into earlier reports of Roman Reigns featuring in the main event.
“The little bit we do know is that the six-man tag match was always the planned match. There was never a plan to do the unification match. So while most feel this was the usual weekly plans changed, it was not. That also explains why last week nobody would confirm Reigns vs. McIntyre to me, only that Reigns would be in the main event.
What we were told is that the decision was made to save Reigns vs. McIntyre for the bigger summer shows. The idea is with the smaller building and coming four weeks after WrestleMania, the interest level wasn’t going to be that high, and they need big matches for the bigger shows.”
It has recently been reported that WWE are saving a match between Drew McIntyre and Roman Reigns for a major show in the summer.