By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer
Or: WWE has a Roman Reigns problem.
Or: Roman Reigns has a WWE problem.
Or … you get it.
A collective shrug of the shoulders was enjoyed by all last Friday when our beloved Tribal Chief appeared opposite Seth Rollins and CM Punk on Smackdown from Italy. It’s been looking like we were going to get Seth vs. Roman vs. Punk in a Triple Threat at WrestleMania next month. A lot of us tried to fight it. Some of us sent WWE HQ letters advocating against it. And I’m guessing there were countless tweets (or X’s?) that argued the same thing: This isn’t the best use for all three wrestlers on pro wrestling’s biggest show of the year. Please don’t do this. WWE, we are begging you.
WWE’s response, as is protocol in these situations, was to tell us to go get bent.
And so here we are, less than a month away and three of the company’s most valuable assets are entangled in a triple threat build because … CM Punk eliminated Roman Reigns from the Royal Rumble? Really? That was the best they could come up with? Reigns is really that pissed that someone had the audacity to try and win the match? If that’s the case, why did we even have the Rumble in the first place? They would have done just as well if they anointed Mr. Anoa’i as the winner, I guess?
That’s just one of the many arguments that can easily be made against this booking decision. In one way or another, it boils down to, “There isn’t a valid story between these three wrestlers and short promo exchanges combined with drawn-out pull-aparts are not going to convince me or anyone else otherwise.” There’s a ton of star power, sure. And the match will most likely deliver (whatever that even means these days). But looking at it on paper, it elicits that dreaded shoulder shrug I mentioned a minute ago.
The whole thing has me thinking about Roman Reigns and where, exactly, he fits in when it comes to the WWE universe these days. It’s not that his presence doesn’t pack a punch; it’s just that his presence doesn’t pack the same punch it packed one year ago to this day. That’s what happens when you aren’t the WWE Universal Champion and you still only have to show up to work a few dozen times a year. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for an attraction being used like an attraction (Brock Lesnar’s spotty attendance is the most recent comparable situation), but when you aren’t sitting at the top of the card anymore because of your decision to stay home, your ability to stay an attraction starts to exist on shaky terms (back to Lesnar – it wasn’t often that we’d see him without WWE’s top prize around his waist whenever he came back and that meant something).
Consider Roman Reigns’s highlights from the last 12 months. He lost the most important belt in WWE at WrestleMania to Cody Rhodes. He went away without as much as even mentioning a desire for a rematch. Popped up four months later at SummerSlam to attack Solo Sikoa. Tagged with Cody at Bad Blood. Tagged with the Usos at Crown Jewel. Did War Games. Actually wrestled on a Raw (the first on Netflix). Didn’t win the Royal Rumble. And that’s it. That’s his April 2024 to April 2025. That’s the list.
The most confounding (read: diminishing returns-ish) thing about the ordeal was that his storyline focus shifted so far away from winning back the WWE Championship and so far towards figuring out his family drama that what was always going to matter most was what Solo Sikoa and his version of the Bloodline could do after things concluded between The New Bloodline and The Old Bloodline. The answer? Not much. It’s not anyone’s fault. But Sikoa is playing second fiddle to Jacob Fatu as they dance in the depths of the mid-card on Friday nights now. Combine that with the reality that Friday nights are WWE’s worst nights of the week these days and you have a cooled off New Bloodline, which – with the sustained push of Jey Uso as a singles wrestler – has led to a cooled off Old Bloodline and, by proxy, a cooled off Roman Reigns.
What’s the answer? Reigns needs to show up more. Reigns needs to be in the title picture. Reigns needs to be more engaged in tippy top storylines. Reigns needs to figure out what’s going on with his Final Boss cousin.
Oh. Wait. About that …
Who knows what’s real, what’s rumor, what’s fabricated, what’s worth reading, what’s not worth reading, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder aloud that if one of the biggest casualties of The Rock’s incoherent flirtation with the pro wrestling business has become Roman Reigns. Have some of Reigns’s plans changed over the last year because of The Rock’s insertion into the mix? Is The Rock’s sporadic nature a reason why we didn’t see Reigns as much as we should have over the last 12 months? For so long, so many of us thought that The Rock would be the one revealed as the leader behind Solo Sikoa’s Bloodline, thus kicking off a feud between Reigns’s Bloodline and The Rock’s Bloodline – was that ever truly the case? And if so, did The Rock call an audible, deciding instead to work with Cody, thus scrapping the momentum of all Bloodline developments as a result?
Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll probably never know for sure. Either way, Roman Reigns feels cold. My guess is the Triple Threat at Mania is viewed by the storytellers less as a throwaway star-studded match and more as the next beat in a tale they are telling between Punk and Reigns. That’s fine, I guess (though as an aside, I sure am getting tired of WWE taking this whole long-term storytelling thing to heart, but I digress). Still, for my money, WrestleMania shouldn’t be used as just another chapter in a story (see: Cody losing against Reigns in his first Mania main event a couple years ago). Instead, Mania is designed to spotlight the best of the blow-offs. It’s not supposed to be chapter eight in a 32-chapter book. It’s best when you know the final pages are coming.
For Roman Reigns’s sake, I hope the book he’s currently writing turns out to be a quick collection of short stories. In that case, he can return to penning compelling novels that land on bestseller lists sooner than later. If not – and if his role at this year’s Mania is a sign of things to come – it’ll be hard to properly acknowledge our Tribal Chief as who he should be, and who he should be is the guy who never leaves the head of the table.
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