As noted, WWE announced that next week’s “season premiere” of Friday Night SmackDown will feature Roman Reigns defending the Universal Championship against Braun Strowman.
As it turns out, that will likely be Strowman’s last night on the brand because the original plans for the WWE Draft had him listed as being traded to Monday Night Raw. Strowman has been appearing on Raw in recent weeks so this appears to have been the plan for a few weeks.
During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez discussed some of the moves being made in the draft and Meltzer said that he expects that Lars Sullivan will remain on SmackDown because they want to keep the big monsters on opposite brands.
Meltzer said, “I would guess [Lars is staying on] SmackDown and the reason I say that is because I figured they would keep Braun Strowman and Lars on separate sides. That’s not necessarily true but that’s kind of how I would do it.”
When Alvarez noted that Braun Strowman is already on SmackDown, Meltzer said, “But Braun is gonna go to Raw is what I’m thinking. Put it this way, Braun was going to Raw in the original thing for this. Obviously, it can change, but he was. That’s why I figured with Roman Reigns, that’s the way to kind of like – you know, you do the job on the way out and Braun’s leaving and they’re trying to get a rating for next week and then the week after is going to be the week on FS1 so that will be an interesting week as well.”
