McGuire’s Mondays: “We want Roman!”

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

Friday marks two months since Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns to become the Undisputed WWE Champion. Two whole months. In that time, WWE has offered up two PLEs, conducted a draft and forced more episodes of “WWE Speed” down our throats than we ever hoped might exist. Cody is still doing Cody things. Reigns, like we all expected, has faded away from the heat of the WWE spotlight.

And man, has that sucked.

Every Friday at 8 p.m. EST, I sit in front of a television and I watch and review Smackdown. In so many words, that experience since the conclusion of WrestleMania 40 has been … less than ideal. There’s no juice, no drama, no real hook. One thing lost in all the hoopla surrounding Cody finally finishing his story in Philadelphia was the pesky question that reads something like this: “Then what?” We all agreed it was his time to finally summit the mountain; very few of us wondered aloud how that might look two months after it happened in a Roman Reigns-less WWE.

Turns out, it doesn’t look great. Somewhat surprisingly, WWE didn’t do a good job building credible heels to stand in front of Cody once he won the strap. Even more odd was the reality that the company held its silly draft only a couple weeks after Cody’s victory, so no brand was off limits when it came to potential people who could work meaningful, long programs with WWE’s most celebrated champion. And yet, here we are, re-heating up a challenger that Cody just beat last month to retain his belt.

Not that the decision to go back to a program between Cody and AJ Styles is a particularly bad one. Styles is probably the best utility player WWE has not named Seth Rollins and it’d take a lot of effort on both ends for him to have a truly terrible match – even at this point, all these years into his career. Plus, the show-closing angle on last week’s Smackdown between Styles and Cody was fun television (complete with a Mark Henry callback). We could see the Styles turn come from a mile away, but we also couldn’t help but be intrigued by watching it happen.

Still, there’s something about going back to Cody vs. AJ that feels a bit hollow. Styles has lost the shine that accompanied him when he first got to the company and regularly worked notable programs with the likes of Reigns, John Cena and even (yikes!) Shane McMahon. While he’s still a great wrestler, the story between him and Rhodes reeks of “wait … they really can’t find anyone else to work with Cody this soon into his reign?” It’s hard to pinpoint blame and it’d probably be unfair to even try. But even with the dastardly takeout he pulled on Friday, Styles isn’t going to generate the same heat Reigns did with the undisputed champ.

But then again, who will?

The answer is nobody. Even Logan Paul, who has a knack for figuring out how to get quick heat, pretty much fell into the same bland category when he was shoehorned in for a cup of Saudi Arabian coffee a few weeks ago. The problem wasn’t him in the same way the problem here isn’t Styles. Instead, the problem is Roman Reigns and the mere fact that he isn’t there. For reasons I’m not smart enough to figure out, it turns out Roman’s cousin Solo Sikoa has no interest in avenging Reigns’s loss and is more than happy listening to Tama Tonga yelp his way through tag matches in the upper mid-card. That’s a problem when his faction – previously led by Reigns – held the top heel spot for so long on the Smackdown brand. If the idea was that Roman could pass off his top dog status to Sikoa and take some time off, that idea hasn’t worked.

So, who’s supposed to generate buzz with Cody? You never want to be the guy to follow the guy, which is probably what made Styles a great first opponent for Cody as a champion. But now that Styles is also going to be Cody’s third opponent as champion, the glaring hole that is Roman Reigns’s absence feels even more pointed. If it wasn’t going to be Sikoa (or any of Sikoa’s new recruits to The Bloodline Wolfpack), then why hasn’t WWE put into motion plans for a formidable opponent Cody can face, say, come SummerSlam? (And don’t tell me a quick backstage moment with Randy Orton is “putting into motion plans”).

It’s a problem and it’s one that only Roman Reigns can fix. Weirdly, Cody finishing his story only opened a new book regarding Roman’s tale. This was never going to be a situation where Roman Reigns loses, goes away, and everything feels fine, full and normal even without his presence. What I’m not sure anyone, including WWE, anticipated, was precisely how Reigns’s absence has reverberated throughout an entire two-hour show on Friday nights. Yeah, the guy didn’t show up for work each week, but the simple fact that his presence was always felt even if he wasn’t physically there went a long way to making Smackdown interesting. Without it, the whole thing feels empty.

So add my voice to those “We want Roman!” chants that we hear get louder each week on WWE television. They’re warranted. Two months into Cody’s championship run and it feels like he’s spinning his wheels until his most noted nemesis makes his return. We knew nobody could fill Roman’s shoes – and we also knew we were getting spoiled each week with the walkup to WrestleMania as Reigns was commonly joined by his megastar cousin The Rock – but the drop-off in intrigue has been both drastic and pronounced come 8 p.m. EST on Friday nights. If nothing else, we’ve learned in these two months that as Roman goes, so does Cody. As such, Cody needs Roman to come back just as much as the two-hour block of wrestling on Friday nights needs Roman to come back.

Until then, it’s starting to feel like this could be one hell of a long summer.