After successfully main-eventing four straight WrestleManias from 37 in Tampa Bay to Night 1 of WrestleMania 40 in South Philadelphia, Roman Reigns saw his run at the top of the WWE Universe come crashing down when Cody Rhodes, the heir apparent to the Rhodes Dynasty in professional wrestling, dethroned him as the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship with a little help from his babyface friends.
Now granted, when it comes to losing with class, having to be tag-teamed by Jey Uso, Seth Rollins, John Cena, and The Undertaker in order to eat a pin following three-consecutive CrossRhodes is about as protected a finish as one could draw up but still, as WWE prepares for the most highly-anticipated episode of RAW in years, one has to wonder what the future holds for the “Tribal Chief,” if he can even call himself that moniker anymore.
Discussing the end of one Undisputed WWE Universal Championship and the beginning of another in the post-WrestleMania 40 press conference, Paul “Triple H” Levesque celebrated the championship reign of Roman before noting that even though his run with the golden strap is over, there's still plenty of interesting storylines to be told with the “Head of the Table.”
“There is a lot of banter about ‘Greatest of all time.' You can make arguments for a lot of people in that, and there are a lot of metrics you can measure by, or opinions, or whatever it is. If he is not the, he is one of, absolutely for certain the greatest of all time. To do what he has done. To overcome all of the things in his career, and the positioning, and the stuff he had to get through and hung in there to get where he needed to be. To deal with his physical issues and his health issues, to overcome. The pandemic, to overcome. Everything he has had to deal with on the way here. And then to go out there and put out a run like no one has ever done before. Epic moments, epic storytelling. I see that word cinema thrown around a lot, but it really is,” Triple H told reporters via Fightful.
“There are few guys that come along in the business where you say during that period of time, that they were in it, they changed the industry. He changed the industry. I mean that in front of the camera, behind the camera, he has changed the industry. He's that good. Can't say enough good stuff about him. And then to do what he did tonight with Cody Rhodes and complete that — and it's not completing the story. It's just getting to the end of that chapter. ‘Cause he's going to go on a new story now that is going to blow people's minds, I think. And I know he's gonna take it to a whole other level. I can't tell you how much respect I have for Roman Reigns.”
Whoa, what could Levesque be talking about? Could Solo Sikoa, after watching his cousin fail to capitalize on his interference in the match, decide to pull off a “Tribal Coup” alongside recent free agent signees Jacob Fatu and Tama Tonga? Or could he try to recapture the belt he lost in South Philadelphia with a Paul Heyman-designed angle so consequential that it raises the stakes to an incredible degree? Needless to say, fans will have to watch RAW tomorrow to find out.
Roman Reigns reflects on his miserable 2019 babyface run.
While Roman Reigns likely still wishes he was the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion, his situation could be a whole lot worse, as he could be forced to go back to 2019, when he was being pelted with dog food by Baron Corbin in an incredibly unpopular babyface angle.
Discussing how it felt to be pushed like a hero when fans hated his guts as part of his A&E documentary, Reigns revealed that he was truly miserable before finding the Island of Relevancy.
“I think that was the most miserable time of my career. This is the time that I was just trying to make everything easy. ‘I'm paid well. I should make the job easy for everybody. That's what being a top guy is, right?' That's what I translated as being a top guy and it just didn't work. So I left once the pandemic hit. That's where it all changed. So, at that point, it was so early on in the pandemic. We didn't have any protocols set up. It was still very unknown. So I made the choice to just go home and I told them, ‘until we can figure out how to make it safe, I'm not putting me or my family at risk,'” Roman Reigns revealed via Fightful.
“I was ready to retire and once I fully removed myself by choice, not due to circumstances, that's when I was able to be truthful with myself. That's when I could really take an authentic genuine eye and look at what I've been doing and look at what I've done. That's when I knew I just wasn't happy with it. I still felt like I didn't achieve what I had set out to do. I didn't reach my potential, I was still under that ceiling, and it was time to break it.”
What would have happened if Reigns never reinvented himself? Would he have truly retired and deprived fans of the fourth-longest title reign in WWE history? Or would he have come back as a babyface once more, with fans continuing to reject him on both a personal and professional level? Fortunately, fans will never have to know, as his story will be told forever in the annals of WWE history, with a spot next to Heyman in the Hall of Fame all but guaranteed.
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