During Monday night’s post-Battleground edition of RAW, which was also the first official episode of the show following last week’s WWE Draft, RAW Commissioner Stephanie McMahon and General Manager Mick Foley announced the creation of a brand new WWE Championship.
As noted, with Dean Ambrose, who was drafted to the SmackDown Live brand last Tuesday, retaining the WWE Championship in his match against Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins at Sunday night’s pay-per-view, the WWE Championship now becomes the exclusive property of SmackDown Live.
With WWE liking to have a “World Champion” on both brands, specifically for the purposes of brand-exclusive pay-per-views and non-televised live events, it was revealed that at the upcoming SummerSlam pay-per-view, two WWE Superstars will compete to crown the first-ever WWE Universal Champion, which is essentially the RAW World Champion.
Featured above is the segment where Stephanie and Foley, who had the entire RAW roster out on the new stage to witness the historic announcement, revealed the creation of the new championship. During the segment, it was also revealed that Seth Rollins will be one of the two participants in the match to decide the first-ever WWE Universal Champion at SummerSlam.
Rollins didn’t have to wait long to find out who he will be stepping into the squared circle with at SummerSlam, as Finn Balor, who made his official main roster debut at RAW on Monday night, defeated Cesaro, Kevin Owens and Rusev in a Fatal-4-Way match to earn a spot in the RAW main event later in the evening. In the RAW main event, Balor defeated former WWE Champion Roman Reigns to officially secure the second spot in the WWE Universal Championship match at SummerSlam.
For complete results of the first episode of RAW following the WWE Draft, click here.
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