We are a few days away from Payback. However, the WWE announced the July PPV for the RAW Brand. Smackdown will be getting Backlash, Money in the Bank, and Battleground before Summerslam. On the other side, RAW will be getting Payback (This Sunday), Extreme Rules, and Great Balls of Fire on July 9th.
This was originally going to be a Smackdown PPV called Bad Blood, however, WWE decided to pull the cord on that event for some reason. It was also mentioned in the promo that American Airlines debuted today that Brock Lesnar will have his first title defense at this pay-per-view. Brock Lesnar won the WWE Universal Title from Goldberg at Wrestlemania. This means also that he won’t be defending the title for the next two pay per views, which is terrible for the belt that hasn’t been around that long.
When it was announced that Goldberg was going to be defending the title against Brock Lesnar, I wrote something on how it did nothing for the WWE to put the title on either Goldberg or Brock Lesnar. This was my fear when Brock won the belt that we would not see it until closer to Summerslam.
However, if I were the WWE, I would use this time that the WWE Universal title is not going to be on TV to push the WWE Intercontinental title. Right now, your Intercontinental champion is Dean Ambrose and it has be ok so far. What I am hoping is that the WWE will make the IC title important since there is no Universal title.
I was listening to Taz on his radio show last week and I agree completely with him on how they should get the title off off Lesnar. By announcing that he won’t defend the title until July 9th means that we also won’t be seeing him on TV until middle of June to start building his feud.