Elias recently suffered an ankle injury which forced WWE to remove him from the announced King Of The Ring semi-finals at this week’s episode of SmackDown Live.
Shane McMahon replaced the Drifter in his match against Chad Gable and a latest report from PWInsider provides some details on the backstage process of this decision.
According to the site, WWE had originally thought of doing a Battle Royal to determine a new challenger for Gable in the semi-final of the tournament but this idea was dismissed.
Vince McMahon then made the call to have Shane McMahon fight the former NXT Star instead. This saw the former SmackDown Commissioner make his return to WWE programming after being away due to jury duty in the past few weeks.
Shane McMahon faced Gable in a 2 out of 3 falls match at this week’s episode of SmackDown Live and he had appointed Kevin Owens as the special guest referee for the bout.
McMahon had promised to forget the $100,000 storyline fine against the former Universal Champion if he helped him win the match on the show.
Though Owens did not help the Best In The World and Shane ended up losing the bout. This resulted in him attacking Kevin and the show ended with McMahon firing Kevin Owens from his job.
Chad Gable will now face Baron Corbin in the King Of The Ring finals at next week’s Raw. There is no word yet on where the company is headed with the storyline between Shane McMahon and Kevin Owens.
