Roman Reigns’ first title defense since WrestleMania announced for Saturday night

When WWE released Roman Reigns’ summer schedule a couple weeks ago, the June 17 house show date in Cincinnati stood out as the only domestic non-televised event.

Likely, that’s because it’s just a short drive to Cincy from the site of this Friday’s SmackDown (Lexington, Kentucky) — another of Roman’s ten summer dates. It’s also a show that WWE probably thought could use a boost for ticket sale purposes. WrestleTix’s update from a week ago said there were more than 2,000 seats available out of the 5,946 that Heritage Bank Center put on sale for Saturday night, and the venue is currently running a buy three, get one free promotion.

Announcing Reigns moved “a few hundred” tickets, per WrestleTix. We’ll see what Heritage Bank Center website’s announcing his first title defense since WrestleMania 39 does:

UNDISPUTED WWE UNIVERSAL CHAMPION ROMAN REIGNS Returns to CINCINNATI for the First Time in over THREE YEARS to defend his title against REY MYSTERIO!!

Is any of this an attempt to draw the wrestling world’s attention away from another show happening on Saturday night, about five hours away in Chicago? That’s probably not the primary purpose for a rare title defense during an equally rare house show booking. But WWE won’t complain if a Hall of Famer challenging the Tribal Chief just so happens to take some of the focus off CM Punk’s return to AEW and the Collision premiere.