Matt Riddle is set to make his debut on Smackdown soon, with a new promo for his arrival airing last night. A new report from Fightful claims that Riddle’s move to Smackdown ended up changing plans for eight different wrestlers.
After a meeting with Vince McMahon, the decision was made for Riddle to move to the main roster. The problem with that was at the time, Riddle was one half of the tag team champions with Pete Dunne, who in currently in the UK and can’t fly over due to travel restrictions. At first, WWE was fine to just wait things out and see what happened until Dunne got back. They even debuted Indus Sher (with Malcolm Bivens) to feud with Riddle, which would continue when Dunne returned.
However, WWE soon realized they needed to have Riddle drop the belts and didn’t think Indus Sher was ready for that spot yet, so they were taken off TV for a bit. It should be noted that head coach Matt Bloom thinks they have a ‘high upside.’ As a result, Imperium was given the tag team titles, and Timothy Thatcher was brought in to be a substitute for Dunne and future opponent for Riddle.
