Clash Of Champions was Raw’s first exclusive Pay-Per-View after the draft. It followed the same theme as Night Of Champions which was the September PPV until last year and it was then discontinued and replaced with Clash Of Champions continuing the theme of having every championship being put on the line.
Raw now has 5 championships, which is as many as WWE had as a whole before the draft. The main event saw Kevin Owens successfully defend the Universal Championship against Seth Rollins, albeit help from Chris Jericho. There was one title change in the show, where Roman Reigns defeated The Bulgarian Brute Rusev to become the new United States Champion.
Apparently, the original idea for Clash Of Champions was not just simply a renaming of Night Of Champions. The PPV was reportedly originally planned to be a dual-branded PPV that would see Raw champions face off against Smackdown Live champions. As we saw, the plan was eventually scrapped.
The reason the plan was scrapped was because WWE already have four PPVs a year which are dual branded – Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam & Survivor Series, and they realized that they did not need to have other events featuring all superstars of the roster. If there is any chance of Champion vs Champion matches, it would most likely be at Survivor Series. Even so, Survivor Series is most likely going to feature Team Raw vs Team Smackdown elimination match types. Interestingly enough, in the previous rendition of the brand split, Smackdown would almost always win the Raw vs Smackdown matches. However, that does not really mean much in a scripted show. The next PPV is No Mercy, a Smackdown Live exclusive PPV which is set to be main-evented by a triple threat match between Dean Ambrose, John Cena, and WWE World Champion AJ Styles. Raw’s next PPV is Hell In A Cell. There are usually two Hell In A Cell matches. From the looks of it, there may be a Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins rematch, this time inside the cell.The decision by WWE to not make Clash Of Champions a dual branded one was definitely the correct decision, as four PPVs a year is enough to be dual branded, otherwise it takes away from the specialty of the brand split. Either which ways, the only real time we will see inter-brand matches will perhaps be one match at Wrestlemania and the other at Survivor Series.
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