World title match announced, but when/where will it take place?

This past Friday night on Friday Night Smackdown!, a new number-one contender to Sheamus‘ World Heavyweight Championship was named. We had a fatal 4-way match in the main event, featuring Alberto Del Rio, Kane, the recently-returned from suspension Rey Mysterio and Daniel Bryan squaring off in the one-fall-to-a-finish match.

In the closing moments of the match, it appeared that Mysterio was on his way to becoming the top contender for the title after a falling splash from the top rope on Daniel Bryan, but before the 3-count could finish, Ricardo Rodriguez dragged him from the ring, breaking up the fall in the process. This allowed Del Rio to quickly capitalize on the situation (Kane had been knocked to the floor earlier) and easily pick up the pin on Bryan, earning himself a title shot in the process.

Now, the big question is, when is Alberto Del Rio getting his rematch with Sheamus for the title?

Now, the obvious choice would be Summerslam, since that’s WWE‘s next big pay-per-view event, and it’s highly unlikely the show will go on without a World Championship bout scheduled. However, despite Del Rio being the top contender for the belt since Friday night (technically Tuesday, when the show was taped), no clear date has been named for the match. Usually, if a title match like this was going to take place on the next PPV, it would be announced as such immediately. However, since that has yet to happen, there is a good possibility that it won’t happen.At least, not in a standard one-on-one match.

While I believe a World title match will still take place at Summerslam, I think it will happen a couple of different ways. The first scenario would be to have Sheamus face Del Rio in a title match on one of the upcoming episodes of Smackdown! before the PPV, and have the match end with outside interference from someone such as Daniel Bryan or Kane, resulting in a multi-man match being booked for the PPV. However, since the WWE title match booked for the show is already in this format, this one’s a long shot.

That leads me to scenario number 2, and a very likely scenario at that. Del Rio defeats Sheamus in a title match on Smackdown!, but does so by either disqualification or count-out, resulting in him winning the match but not the title. Del Rio makes a legitimate claim of having defeated the champion and deserving a rematch, which in turn results in an Extreme Rules-type match at Summerslam, where a clear, decisive winner can emerge.

Although this is not official and is just my prediction, this type of scenario has been played out many times in the past, and could very easily be used for the big event in less than three weeks.