Roman Reigns Becoming The Unified Champion Wasn't Originally Part Of WWE's Plan

Roman Reigns is the Unified WWE Universal Champion and since he won't be defending those titles again until Night of Champions at the earliest, he will hit 1,000 days as Universal Champion. In fact, the night on which he will probably next defend those titles will be his 1,000th day with that particular championship. A historic reign whether you're enjoying it or not, and apparently, if it hadn't been for a last-minute change of plans more than a year ago, it wouldn't have panned out this way.

Never The Plan

That's according to a new report from Fightful Select (via ComicBook). A few months prior to Reigns beating Brock Lesnar for the WWE Title so he could unify it with his Universal Championship, The Tribal Chief was supposed to defend the one belt he had at that time against Lesnar at Day 1. Testing positive for COVID-19 right before the show, Reigns' match was pulled and Lesnar was added to the event's WWE Title match instead.

Lesnar went on to win the WWE Title that night, a victory that got the ball rolling toward the Lesnar vs. Reigns title unification match at WrestleMania three months later. It's unclear whether Reigns and Lesnar would have faced off for the one title at WrestleMania if the latter had not won the WWE Championship on Day 1, or even if Lesnar would have beaten Reigns on Day 1 and ended his Universal Title reign well short of the 1,000-day milestone he's about to hit.

Splitting The Titles

Despite never actually planning to unify its World Titles, WWE has now kept them on the same person for well over a year. There have seemingly been plans to split the titles on more than one occasion, but WWE has deemed the plans too complex to pull the trigger on. Most notably the idea to have Drew McIntyre beat Reigns for one of his titles at Clash at the Castle last year with Austin Theory and the Money in the Bank playing into the decision somehow.

Fightful Select also noted plans for either McIntyre or Seth Rollins to be WWE Champion going into WrestleMania 39 and defend the title against Cody Rhodes. More title split plans that never came to fruition. WWE has since decided to introduce an entirely new championship which will be won by its first holder at Night of Champions. Apparently the title being on the line at Night of Champions is why the event had its name changed from King and Queen of the Ring.