WrestleMania Program Could Have Spoiled Superstar Shake-Up

The WWE Superstar Shake-Up is making a lot of people wonder what could be next for both of WWE’s main roster brands. They’ve done big things before when changing up the roster and 2018 might be no different.

Bryan Alvarez discussed what could happen to AJ Styles if he moved to Raw on Wrestling Observer Live after one caller pointed out that his WrestleMania program seemed to list Styles, Naomi, The New Day, and Jinder Mahal as Raw Superstars with Finn Balor, Roman Reigns, and Asuka in the SmackDown section.

“There is a show and I cannot remember which show it is but it’s way down the road like this fall and there was a poster out for it to promote it and it had various stars on it. Somebody there had said this is an interesting poster because you know because obviously plans can change a million times — but at the time the poster was made the idea was the individuals who were on the top were babyfaces and the individuals at the bottom were going to be heels at the time. Now again this could change a million times.”

“But I look at the poster and Nakamura was on the heel side I thought, ‘huh, how about that?’ Well, low and behold Mania comes and Nakamura turns heel” Alvarez continued. “So I don’t if that’s a coincidence I don’t know but the point of this is sometimes when they do these things sometimes there’s a reason for it and sometimes it’s completely at random. The idea of AJ switching brands… what’s weird about this is a couple of things.”

“When they did Daniel Bryan vs AJ Styles and Nakamura ran in — I mean honestly my first thought was ‘is one of these two going to the other show and they just figured do this match before the shake-up because one was going one way one was going the other.”

Alvarez also pointed out how strange it is to trade champions at this point because their titles are colored to represent their specific brand. He then went on to discuss the fact that Raw is an hour longer than SmackDown Live and AJ Styles could be a guy WWE would feel more comfortable with featured in longer matches every week.

He went on to propose we could be looking at a complete championship switch at this point where AJ could go over to Raw and Lesnar could get moved to SmackDown until Roman Reigns wins the Universal Championship at the Greatest Royal Rumble. Because it could make sense to go that direction.

Of course, anything can change on a dime in WWE because, in the end, it’s all up to what Vince McMahon wants to do.

If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit Wrestling Observer Live with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription