WWE News: ‘SmackDown Live’ Match Penciled In As Main Event For Sunday Night’s ‘Backlash’

Even though the Greatest Royal Rumble took place last week, WWE is already prepared to bring back dual-branded pay-per-views to the fans. On Sunday night, the stars from the rosters of both SmackDown Live and Monday Night Raw will battle it out at Backlash, and the main event is not going to be the match that many are expecting. While Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe are prepared for a battle of the beasts, they won’t be taking the top spot.

For weeks, Samoa Joe has been pushing the match he has with Reigns at Backlash and it has been built up really well. Joe has actually been promoting it across both shows since he was on Monday Night Raw and ended up being moved to SmackDown Live during the 2018 version of the Superstar Shake-Up.

While it is going to be a huge match on the card, it won’t be the main event match closing out the night.

According to the Twitter account of WrestleVotes, the main event of Backlash will be a solid Team Blue match with AJ Styles defending the WWE Championship against Shinsuke Nakamura. This will be another rematch of the bout from WrestleMania 34, and one that again happened at the Greatest Royal Rumble.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs AJ Styles is penciled in for the main event tomorrow night at Backlash. Samoa Joe v Roman Reigns was considered but plans that were originally discussed for that match were dropped therefore no sense in closing with it. I’m unsure of what those plans were.

— WrestleVotes (@WrestleVotes) May 5, 2018

It appears as if Samoa Joe vs. Roman Reigns was originally scheduled to main event Backlash, but some other plans for the match have been cancelled. With those plans no longer in the works, it made the bout between the two more of a mid-card match and one that made “no sense” as being the closer.

There is no real word on what those “plans” were, but it is interesting to know that something different was in store for Reigns vs. Joe.

Backlash has nine matches on the card with one of them coming on the Kickoff Show with Bayley vs. Ruby Riott. Out of the other matches, five of them will have titles on the line from both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live, with some possible new champions in place by the end of Sunday evening.

While AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura battling for the WWE Championship is well worthy of being the main event, it is interesting to know that something has changed to take Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe out of that spot.