The WWE has been changing up their plans quite a bit heading into their big co-branded Survivor Series pay-per-view this Sunday. First, they moved the WWE world title from Jinder Mahal to AJ Styles. After that, the had The Shield drop the Raw tag titles, and then they added both John Cena and Triple H to the main event. The most recent change involved the WWE SmackDown Live women’s championship, which Charlotte Flair won last night on TV.
Why Did The WWE Put The Title Back On Charlotte?
Heading into Survivor Series , it looked like Natalya would represent SmackDown Live as their women’s champion in a match against Monday Night Raw women’s champion Alexa Bliss. It was a strange match between two heels, but the WWE made a change during last night’s live SmackDown Live TV event.
However, the reason for the title change was not to make the match a face vs. heel match or even to give fans the biggest stars on each show fighting each other. According to Cageside Seats , the reason the WWE has Charlotte Flair heading into Survivor Series as the SmackDown Live women’s champion is because of her father.
The report indicates that the WWE wanted to capitalize on the publicity they are receiving right now from the ESPN 30 for 30 special, Nature Boy . Charlotte Flair also just released a book containing her life story and having her as champion makes sense based on these two events.
As a matter of fact, “Nature Boy” Ric Flair was at SmackDown Live and came out to congratulate his daughter after her big win.
Beautiful. #SDLive @MsCharlotteWWE @RicFlairNatrBoy pic.twitter.com/zKyNEYZv0f
— WWE (@WWE) November 15, 2017
Wrestling Inc also reported that cameras had followed Charlotte Flair around her hometown in Charlotte before she won the title, so it looks like the WWE is working on some sort of feature about the new SmackDown Live women’s champion as well.
The New Survivor Series Lineup
Outside of Charlotte Flair, the other changes that the WWE pulled off also changed the Survivor Series show drastically. The first big change was to take the WWE world title off Jinder Mahal. It seemed the match between Jinder Mahal and Brock Lesnar received almost no fan support, so the WWE finally pulled the plug on his title reign, and on SmackDown Live , AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan gave fans more to care about when it comes to Survivor Series than Jinder Mahal did over the last month.
The next move was to take the Monday Night Raw tag team titles off The Shield and gave them back to The Bar. This was to set up a huge six-man match between The Shield and The New Day.
The final change heading into Survivor Series was to remove Jason Jordan from the Monday Night Raw team, and the addition of Triple H to counter the SmackDown Live addition of John Cena.
[Featured Image by WWE]
