The Trial of the Tribal Chief segment with Roman Reigns, The Usos, Paul Heyman, and Solo Sikoa lasted nearly 40 minutes on last Friday’s episode of WWE SmackDown, leading to Jey’s challenge for a match with Reigns.
The match is scheduled for August 5th at the SummerSlam PLE in Detroit, MI.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer stated that the main focus is on Solo and Jey, rather than Reigns vs. Jey, because WWE is confident that the storyline is hot enough to shift the focus to Solo vs. Jey. Meltzer then speculated on how WWE might get to Sikoa vs. Jey Usos.
Meltzer said, “The other thing was that Jey, the one who’s getting the next title shot at Summerslam, which is a major show, but for the long-term story, I mean, they had Solo throw around Jey over the table, you know, destroy him and everything like that. Now, Jey did get revenge at the end of the show with the 10-chair shots. But the point is, this was not just, you know, like usually when they have, when you got your championship match at SummerSlam or WrestleMania or whatever, I mean, that’s the focus, the laser focus on building this match. And this one, they’re confident enough that they’re hot enough that they don’t have to focus everything on Roman and Jey. And Jey is the big part. It is the big one, but they’re focusing so much on Solo, just telling you because I think they won an even bigger peak when they come to Roman and Solo and maybe Jey and Solo. At some point, you could do that stemming from everything. Well, I think the obvious thing is, you know, that Jey’s losing to Roman. And so Jey and Solo can have a big feud afterward, and Jey can get a big win over Solo with something that Roman does to cost Solo the match, which builds up the split between Solo and Roman, right? And then you’ve got the direction there and leading into whatever you’re doing for WrestleMania. So, I mean, it’s a very simple, basic booking. I mean, there’s nothing, there’s no, you know, swerves being thrown in. They don’t make any sense. I mean, you don’t know exactly where it’s going, but you kind of have an idea where it’s going, and it is going in that direction. But I mean, here’s the thing. Everything that they’ve done, from Sammy Zayn and Kevin Owens to The Uso, from the start. If you’ve watched it, you know it’s all coming. This has not been one of those things where, you know, it’s not like it’s coming outta nowhere.”
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
