Vince McMahon Made Survivor Series 2017 Changes Last Week
The boss decided the card needed a reshuffle...
PWInsider.com are reporting that Vince McMahon made sweeping changes to the Survivor Series 2017 card as early as last week.
John Cena was originally pencilled in to play Special Guest Referee for the match between Jinder Mahal and Brock Lesnar, but McMahon decided he'd be best placed as a member of Shane McMahon's Team SmackDown on the show instead. That left the boss needing something special for Lesnar's match.
Enter one AJ Styles. AJ winning the WWE Title on SmackDown in Manchester, England wasn't only booked to give the UK fans something historic on the recent tour, it was also planned so that Styles could replace Mahal as Brock's opponent.
Initial booking plans also called for AJ to be in Cena's spot on Team SmackDown, but Vince seemingly lost faith in Jinder as WWE Champ somewhere along the line and elected to take him out of the pay-per-view entirely.
There's no word on what Mahal's immediate future is, or if he'll even be present on the November 19 show. This represents quite the fall from grace for a man who was WWE Champ for much of 2017.