What’s the story?
According to PWInsider, WWE Champion Randy Orton was supposed to defend his title against Bray Wyatt at Smackdown’s exclusive PPV Backlash. However, WWE decided to move the ‘House of Horrors’ match on the upcoming Raw-exclusive PPV, Payback.
In case you didn’t know....
Bray Wyatt was moved from Smackdown to Monday Night Raw during the superstar shake-up that took place this week. As surprising as it may seem, former Wyatt member Luke Harper and current Wyatt member Erick Rowan stayed put on SmackDown LIVE.
That leaves former Wyatt member Braun Strowman as the only man affiliated to Bray currently on Raw. However, the company does not even acknowledge his former alliance with the Wyatt Family anymore, which means Bray Wyatt will likely be running solo on Raw.
Also read: What does a WWE House of Horrors match mean?
The heart of the matter
Pwinsider reports that the reason the Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt house of horrors match was moved to Payback was because of the last-minute decision to have Bray Wyatt move from Smackdown to Raw.
The match was originally scheduled for the May 21st Smackdown-exclusive PPV Backlash but now will happen a month earlier on the April 30th Payback PPV.
What’s next?
The current plan is for Randy Orton to retain his championship at Payback, although it is unknown at this time whether he will defend the WWE Championship at Backlash as well. WWE has plans of moving AJ Styles back into the title picture, who could be Randy Orton’s next opponent once the feud with Bray Wyatt is over.
As we reported earlier in the day, WWE has booked Styles to go up against Owens in the meantime as Orton finishes up with Wyatt.
Author’s take
Clearly, WWE is pretty adamant to keep the brand-split intact because they could have had Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton on both brands until their feud was over. The decision to move it up is a clear sign that they want the feud to be done with as the stars are on different brands now, and that WWE wants both wrestlers to move onto different feuds.
It will be interesting to see what WWE plans to do with Bray Wyatt on Raw. Just when we thought Wyatt had finally made it to the main event scene with his recent World title win, he dropped the title to Orton at WrestleMania, further proving why his character cannot break through a barrier preventing it from being a true main event act.
Perhaps WWE has a great idea for the character that will allow it to finally break through the glass ceiling.
It will also be interesting to see where Randy Orton goes from here as champion. A feud against AJ Styles for the WWE Championship is a “money-match”, and Styles seems to be the only wrestler on Smackdown right now on Orton’s level.
The question is whether or not WWE will wait until Summerslam to have the potential blockbuster rivalry.
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