As seen during Tuesday night’s WWE SmackDown! Live broadcast, Aleister Black defeated Sami Zayn in just over five minutes. The match was originally intended for SummerSlam, as evidenced in Zayn’s promos where he threatened to “expose” Black at the Toronto pay-per-view event. Due to major creative re-writes once again, Black wound up accepting Zayn’s challenge on SmackDown! Live instead. According to Dave Meltzer, the reason this was done is because Vince McMahon needed “time to fill” on SmackDown! Live. He said,
“The deal with Aleister Black and Sami Zayn was when Vince showed up and didn’t like Smackdown and he tore the whole show apart…when he was done with the stuff he didn’t like and then changing the main event, they had an hour to fill. It was, ‘Well, what can we do with this hour? Let’s put the Aleister Black match with Sami Zayn on. So that was one of the things they did to fill the hole. So they took that off the PPV. That’s the reason that’s off the PPV.“
