The tournament to crown a new WWE World Heavyweight Champion begins tonight on Raw and the lineup is stacked from top to bottom.
The championship was originally introduced as a “Raw exclusive” title with Undisputed WWE Universal champion Roman Reigns set to appear on Smackdown only moving forward.
However, despite a draft just taking place to supposedly split the brands once again, the bracket for the new world title features superstars from both shows rather peculiarly.
While this is another example of WWE abandoning storylines and drafts suddenly, it does make for a brilliant tournament and one that should lead to some even better matches.
The participants are as follows: Seth Rollins, Austin Theory, A.J. Styles, Bobby Lashley, Finn Bálor, Rey Mysterio, Edge, Damian Priest, The Miz, Sheamus, Shinsuke Nakamura and Cody Rhodes.
WWE’s production job did their usual excellent job in creating a video to hype the tournament, which you can see below.
12 WWE Superstars from #WWERaw and #SmackDown look to claim the World Heavyweight Title at #WWENOC.
Find out who they are NOW! 👀 pic.twitter.com/v5qvYFx5eH
— WWE (@WWE) May 7, 2023
Both Raw and Smackdown this week will feature a pair of triple-threat matches. The four winners of these matches will then compete in semi-finals, with the final taking place at Night of Champions on May 27th in Saudi Arabia.
Cody Rhodes seems the obvious choice but winning this title and not dethroning Roman Reigns eventually would be a serious misstep. Expect Brock Lesnar to prevent Cody in storyline from competing for the belt ad they continue their feud.
This leaves Seth Rollins as the best pick, with the former Shield man being incredibly popular right now and a perfect all-round wrestler to carry the title into a new era of Raw.