After several weeks of anticipation, WWE is going to be holding their annual SummerSlam show in Brooklyn, New York tonight. The Barclays Center is hosting the major WWE event for the third year in a row and it will be welcoming the company back next year in August 2018. The two top matches on the show will see Brock Lesnar defend his Universal Championship against Braun Strowman, Roman Reigns, and Samoa Joe, and the other match will see Jinder Mahal put his WWE title on the line against Shinsuke Nakamura. It appears as though WWE may have actually had to do some reshuffling to the SummerSlam card before the huge show was set.
We all know by now that The Hardy Boyz were originally set to take on The Revival, but that match was cancelled after Scott Dawson suffered a serious bicep tear. The Hardys will now be teaming up with Jason Jordan to battle The Miz, Curtis Axel, and Bo Dallas. Sportskeeda’s Dirty Sheets podcast has since reported on some other matches that were going to be taking place on the SummerSlam show this year before plans changed. Originally, Naomi was going to defend the Smackdown Women’s Championship against Charlotte Flair. Not long before the Battleground pay-per-view, the company decided to have Natalya challenge for the title in order to extend Naomi’s run as champion. The feud between Flair and Naomi is now set to begin in early 2018.
It was also mentioned that John Cena was supposed to be taking on AJ Styles at SummerSlam. The match was briefly teased on Smackdown after Cena returned a few months ago. However, another match that was planned, Shane McMahon vs. Kevin Owens, was reportedly moved to a different show. The McMahon/Owens match is now expected to take place at Hell in a Cell later this year in order to have a big main event for the show. As a result, the company decided to extend the current Styles/Owens feud, and John Cena’s opponent for SummerSlam was changed to Baron Corbin. The aforementioned Universal and WWE world championship matches have apparently been planned and untouched since June.