WWE

We now know who was originally planned to challenge Seth Rollins for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship on Raw on June 19.

WWE had advertised for a week that Rollins would be defending his title in an open challenge, but instead, that didn’t happen as Rollins was attacked by his Money in the Bank opponent Finn Balor at the very start of the show.

It soon emerged that the decision for Balor to attack Rollins instead of Rollins defending the title was something Vince McMahon changed as a way to heat Balor up ahead of their aforementioned match at Money in the Bank in London on July 1.

What we didn’t know until now was who the original plans listed as Rollins’ opponent before McMahon made that change.

Well, according to Fightful Select, Rollins’ opponent was listed on internal formats as “TBA”, but in reality, the plan was for it to be a returning Tommaso Ciampa.

Ciampa did still make his return on Raw in the segment right after Balor’s attack on Rollins, but it was in a match against his former partner The Miz.

Obviously Ciampa beat Miz in that match, but according to Fightful, there was actually a non-finish planned for the Rollins vs Ciampa match rather than it just being Rollins beating Ciampa.

Fightful did also mention that they heard “all of those originally planned for the match wanted the match to go through as planned”, and “those around the match were clearly frustrated by the change”.

If you want to stay fully updated on all the latest wrestling news, click the red bell in the bottom right of your screen to receive notifications from WrestleTalk.com straight to your device!

• RAW
• Finn Balor
• Seth Rollins
• Tommaso Ciampa
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

Share this article with friends