Possible Reason Why WWE Announced Brock Lesnar Vs. Randy Orton SummerSlam Match This Week
As noted, WWE announced this week that Brock Lesnar would be facing Randy Orton at WWE SummerSlam next month.
It was a surprising announcement as far as timing goes, given that Lesnar is facing Mark Hunt tonight at UFC 200 and there is always a chance of an injury or concussion. In addition, from a booking perspective, WWE could have put Lesnar in the main event championship match at SummerSlam if he got a dominant victory over Hunt with the mainstream media that he would receive for the win.
As noted this morning, UFC President Dana White spoke at a media scrum last night about WWE promoting UFC 200 on their social media, and said that the UFC would reciprocate.
"The fact that they did this, I wanted to reciprocate" White said (h/t to Bloody Elbow for the transcription and The Fight Network for the video above). "If you look today, Brock's weigh-in will be on all social media for WWE. This deal couldn't have worked out any better."
Look for the UFC to mention tonight at UFC 200 that Lesnar will be facing Randy Orton at SummerSlam, or possibly even air a promo for the show. This is not confirmed, this is just my guess. White noted during the media scrum that they are expecting to beat the 1.5 million pay-per-view buys generated by UFC 100, so it's great publicity for WWE.
Remember to join us for our live UFC 200 coverage tonight. As noted, the Wrestling Inc. Podcast was postponed this past Monday because of the 4th of July holiday, but we will be back tonight right after UFC 200 to talk about the big event, Lesnar facing Randy Orton at SummerSlam, The Final Deletion and more. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes as well as our RSS feed, which you can use to subscribe through any podcast app. Also don't forget to give us a thumbs up and subscribe on Youtube.