Triple H Lays Out Structure Of Upcoming WWE World Heavyweight Title Tournament

Last week on "Raw," WWE Chief Content Officer Paul "Triple H" Levesque announced that, with WWE Undisputed Universal Champion Roman Reigns being drafted exclusively to "SmackDown," the "Raw" brand would be getting a new main championship, a revived World Heavyweight Championship represented by a belt that combines elements of both the "big gold belt" and "big logo" designs. On Friday, at a press conference promoting Saturday night's Backlash event in Puerto Rico, he announced further details of the tournament to determine the new champion, which, despite the reason for a new world title, will involve both "Raw' and "SmackDown" wrestlers.

"Starting after Backlash, this Monday night on 'Raw,' we will begin a World Heavyweight Championship tournament," he explained. "It will be across both brands. On 'Monday Night Raw,' there will be two triple threat matches, with the winners facing each other later that night to determine a winner for 'Monday Night Raw.' Then, Friday on 'SmackDown,' the same will happen." The "Raw" and "SmackDown" winners will then face off at Night of Champions on May 23 to determine the new champion.

The mystery behind WWE introducing a new world title just over a year after unifying the WWE Championship and WWE Universal Championship was solved earlier this week, though. As initially reported by Fightful Select, there was no long-term plan to unify the titles until then-Universal Champion Roman Reigns fell ill and had to pull out of the January 2022 Day One event. As a make-good, Brock Lesnar was inserted to the WWE Championship match at Day One and won that tile, so since he and Reigns were set to battle at WrestleMania 38, that match became a unification match. Reigns won that match, with the resulting unified title being named the WWE Undisputed Universal Championship and represented by both belts throughout its existence to date. Since Reigns is so protected as to not be losing any time soon and there was never a unification-centric long-term plan, a new title was going to be introduced in due time.