Rumors abound as 2019 nears its end, and this one is a good one. According to reports, Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt set for WrestleMania 36 for the Universal Championship as Smackdown’s main event.
This comes with other reports indicating the WWE is trying to keep Wyatt and Reigns separated as much as possible. It makes sense given how Smackdown is “The Big Dog’s yard” and Wyatt has been talking it over superstar chunk after superstar chunk. There’s really no reason for the two to not have already clashed aside from building to a much larger meeting of the two enormously popular superstars.
It also makes sense since we’re thisclose to the Road to WrestleMania officially beginning with the Royal Rumble.
Reigns cooling until the right time
There’s a good chance that the Reigns and King Corbin feud is nothing more than a place keeper for the Big Dog. It’ll keep him in the public eye and really turn fan support on for him as he’s continually attacked, mocked, and humiliated by Corbin, Dolph Ziggler, and the Revival.
There’s no secret that McMahon loves Reigns, as McMahon shoving him down our throats a couple of years ago attests to. This cooling period could also be a way of letting some of the backlash remaining from that push to fade away prior to a big push for WrestleMania. Since returning with his leukemia in remission, Reigns has been one of the more popular stars, and with Rollins losing the fans as the ultimate face, it’s now up to Reigns to slay the monster that is the Fiend and bring the championship back to the good side. Unfortunately, Wyatt is the most popular superstar at the moment. The fans go insane when he enters the arena, and boo when he’s attacked.
This leads to speculation that we could be facing another confrontation between the promotion’s top two stars. While it’s happened several times before, this has a slightly different feel, kinda like the lead up to Kane vs. Undertaker match at WrestleMania 14. That is, assuming that the fans remain behind Reigns. There’s no indication his support is going anywhere, but anything can happen between now and April.
Things change
As I mentioned above, Rollins lost the support of the fans when he was turned into the promotion’s top face. At that time, it was rumored that he would remain Universal champion until WrestleMania 36 where he’d face Roman Reigns.
As we all know, things in professional wrestling can change in the blink of an eye whether it’s due to injury, bad fan reaction, or falling out of favor with Vince McMahon. One thing that has changed is there is apparently no leaks concerning WrestleMania yet.
Dave Meltzer reiterated this on Wrestling Observer Radio: “We’re in December and usually right around now, you kind of know the WrestleMania card. I know a little bit but I don’t know much. I know what’s not gonna happen but I don’t know what is gonna happen but there’s a couple of matches that I kind of know.”
In an era where the WWE brand is allegedly what they use to attract fans to shows instead of the wrestlers, this is pretty smart. It’ll also keep us tuning in to find out what’s going to happen each week instead of tuning out. Looks like no cheating for us this year, though a Fiend and Roman Reigns match would be pretty epic if done right. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if this is a rumor or if the old saying “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is true.
