From the WWE rumor mill: Reason for the WWE Championship match on the next SmackDown Live episode
What's the story?
On a recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer gave potential reasons why the WWE booked AJ Styles vs. Jinder Mahal for the WWE Championship on this Tuesday's edition of SmackDown Live.
He gave reasons that would fit both a title change and successful defence.
In case you didn't know...
Over the past two weeks, AJ Styles has faced both Singh Brothers, and after this week's match, Styles was brutally attacked by Jinder.
Shane McMahon posted on Twitter Thursday afternoon announcing the championship match as you can see below:
The heart of the matter
If the championship ends up changing hands, Meltzer believes that Jinder could be injured and they need to get the title off of him.
With Jinder being a part of the tour of India coming up in December, they want him to be as healthy as possible, and if it means giving him a month off, that is the best option.
Another scenario Meltzer gave in the event of a title change is that there has not been much hype around the first ever WWE Champion vs. WWE Universal Champion match at Survivor Series, and putting AJ Styles in against Brock Lesnar could spark more interest.
If the result is a win for Jinder, then the scenario around this is that Vince McMahon may have panicked over the low SmackDown ratings for this week (they lost half a million viewers from the week before with their lowest rating since June).
If that is the case, then Vince is hoping that booking this title match will see a rebound in those numbers.
What's next?
The WWE Championship match between Jinder Mahal and AJ Styles is just a few short days away as it will occur this Tuesday from Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Author's take
Meltzer's theories make complete sense, and I had my own theory on this as well. I think there is still going to be a Superstar Shakeup that will occur after Survivor Series. It's long been rumoured that both Jinder Mahal and Kevin Owens were moving to Raw.
It just so happens that Jinder is going to face Owens during the tour of India; which is a Raw-branded set of WWE Live events. I think the title is going to come off of Jinder here on Tuesday; which sets up Style and Lesnar at Survivor Series.
The bigger picture here is that I believe Shinsuke Nakamura is going to win the Royal Rumble to give us a WrestleMania match for the ages between Styles and Nakamura.