More on Brock Lesnar’s Return on SmackDown

Friday’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown in Minneapolis, Minnesota featured the surprise return of Brock Lesnar. Lesnar made his surprise appearance and brawled with the Bloodline following Roman Reigns’ promo boasting about him leaving due to him wrecking everyone that had challenged him over the past two years.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that WWE officials made the decision for Lesnar to be put in a feud with Roman Reigns for this year’s SummerSlam event after it became clear that Randy Orton would not be able to perform any time soon due to his back injury and potential surgery. Orton reportedly had been originally planned to be Reigns opponent for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship match at the event.

It was reported that word of Lesnar’s return had started to emerge backstage shortly before 5PM EST on Friday afternoon but he was not featured on the internal rundowns for the show that were handed out prior to its start.

In regards to the timing of Lesnar’s return, it was reported that it was not done as a reactionary move to Vince McMahon’s investigation and instead was something that had plans put in place around three weeks ago.