The night before SummerSlam, Tama Tonga and Jacob Fatu beat DIY to become the new WWE Tag Team Champions. The Street Profits became their first challenger last week on SmackDown and were all set to reclaim tag gold this week. However, an interesting change took place before the match. The tag title was stripped from the Samoan Werewolf and instead handed to Tonga Loa.
The Bloodline were successful in defending their WWE Tag Team Championship against The Street Profits on the latest episode of SmackDown. After the show, Fatu re-posted the result on his X account with emojis of him acknowledging his tribal chief, Solo Sikoa, and the blood emoji.
During the show, Sikoa announced that he had successfully taken out Roman Reigns. Now, he wanted nothing to do with OTC. Instead, he would shift his focus to bringing the WWE Undisputed Championship to the Bloodline. For this task, he needed Fatu to be his personal enforcer. Thus, the 32-year-old was going to relinquish him from his duties of defending the WWE Tag Team Championship. Tonga Loa would instead take his place.
The Bloodline took advantage of the Freebird rule. This rule allows any two members of a faction to defend the tag titles, regardless of who won them. This rule was often used by The New Day across their multiple tag title reigns in the 2010s.
Why did Solo Sikoa remove Jacob Fatu from the WWE Tag Team Championship?
Apart from the Kayfabe reasons provided by Solo Sikoa on SmackDown, many fans were interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes reason for this change. After all, Tonga Loa was the one who was originally supposed to team with Tama Tonga to take on DIY. However, WWE had decided to insert Jacob Fatu into the match because of his better in-ring presence.
The most likely reason for this change is Fatu’s leg injury, which he suffered at SummerSlam during the show’s main event. He suffered an ankle ailment, which caused him to miss the next episode of the blue brand. Furthermore, even when he showed up last week to attack Roman Reigns, he was seen wearing a brace on his leg.
Fatu was stripped of the title, possibly to give him some time off to recover from his injury. Even if he is showing up on SmackDown, he will only be required to carry out beatdowns as he did last week. Holding the title would likely have meant him having to wrestle full-length matches.
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