10 New Directions For WWE After SummerSlam 2018

2. Raw Has A Full-Time Universal Champion Again

Roman Reigns Universal Title
WWE.com

What Happened At SummerSlam: It happened, it finally happened. Roman Reigns beat Brock Lesnar, albeit thanks to a sizeable distraction from Braun Strowman, and became the new Universal Champion.

Where It's Going: For the first time since Kevin Owens was strolling around with the thing in 2016-17, Raw has a full-time World Champion who will appear weekly on the show. Crunch the numbers and prepare to be amazed, because it's been 533 days since that was the case; KO lost to Goldberg on 5 March 2017 at Fastlane, and both he and Lesnar went on to be part-time attractions.

It'll be a curious watch to see how Raw's writing team handle having the Universal belt on TV every week again. They haven't had it in so long, and they've even managed to book pay-per-view main events without the title being present.

Reigns will need a challenger over the next few months. It'll either be Braun Strowman (the most logical), Finn Bálor (an outside bet) or someone totally left-field like Drew McIntyre.

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Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.