Roman Reigns has been WWE Universal Champion since late-August 2020 and would snatch the WWE Championship from nemesis Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 38. He would go on to defend his unified championship against Lesnar at SummerSlam 2022 and pretty much double solidify that he is untouchable.
Are We at the Point Where No One Really Cares Who Beats Roman Reigns?
However, very few champions in wrestling are untouchable. Eventually, someone’s going to come along while the champion is riding high on some strong defenses and end their reign. Mind you, depending on the company or product, you get one of two cases.
The first case sees your newly minted champion goes on to have their own decent reign. After all, they beat this dominant-ass champion, unless a weasel snuck the title, this new champion should be able to have their own strong reign.
Then we have the second case where the champion loses the belt only to regain in a month or two—meaning the belt honestly could’ve just stayed on the previous champion. You know, until the company finds a decent opponent who can put this guy away in a convincing fashion.
That’s the key here: beating Roman Reigns in a convincing fashion. When you have a champion who was built up brawls, rivalries, feuds, competitive bouts, shenanigans, and so on, a hard-to-beat champion is created.
You also have to factor in that this isn’t the Attitude Era when the ooze of the WWE Universe was in so much turmoil and was so unpredictable that one or two-month champions were reasonable.
No, we’re in the WWE Universe period of WWE where we’ve reached a certain level of comfortable predictability. However, I will admit that the level of comfortable predictability has brought us back to a time when champions actually hold the belt and become associated with the strength of their reigns and not on how many times they’ve held it during a time where hot-shotting the belt was the move.
It makes it easier to respect and care about the biggest prize in the company when everyone and their mama haven’t held it at least twice in one year.
How Will Roman’s Reign Look in a New Age?
To get back to the original question, I do believe that a good chunk of viewers no longer cares about who will beat Roman Reigns. In that chunk, some have either moved on to other things in wrestling or just within WWE to focus on. Then you have others who just want WWE to end this because they feel it’s gone on long enough.
I believe most viewers and fans are interested in what directions Reigns’ reign takes with the shake-ups at the top. It’s not going to be some fantasy booking turn around “OMG TRIPLE H IS IN CHARRRRRGE!!!” or anything like that. The interesting thing here is how Roman’s two-year reign plays out as these changes occur and what that means for how booking for the main event titles goes going forward.
This is similar to when you notice a changing of the guard in WWE. I’m not saying that Reigns will be phased out gradually but there will be a gradual change in WWE and there could be a new era. Just remember that the transition between the New Generation and Attitude Era—and the Attitude Era and Ruthless Aggression Era—were gradual.
During those changes in the era, how the WWE and World Championships were handled differently. With that said, I’ll say that there is definitely some Roman Reigns fatigue but I wouldn’t blame Roman so much as the opponents who could put him away in a convincing fashion have been seen enough already.
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