MONDAY NIGHT REIGNS-O-METER #93: Tracking Roman Reigns’s ability to beat the odds and come out on top

Roman Reigns is one of the most dramatic, divisive, and discussed WWE performers in history. The company makes desperate play after desperate play to make him your favorite graps guy – with limited success. How do they do it? What do they do?

I’m Tom Colohue and this is the Monday Night Reigns-o-Meter.

Roman Reigns, hero to many, is now so storied and successful that he is literally handing championships to people. That’s the world we live in now. Roman is so good, too good, so too good that he can see an opportunity at a championship and confidently say “No, this title is meant for the fresh new rookie, R-Truth.”

What a guy. What a guy.

This week, as with every week going back until the dawn of time, Roman Reigns was featured on both Raw and Smackdown. Being fair, if there’s one thing I can say with absolute confidence, it’s that three hours of Roman Reigns just isn’t enough. The plan was to move him down to two?! Two!? What a travesty that would have been. Anything less than five hours of Roman Reigns is simply not enough.

Except we could have had the big dog 24/7. At all times. On our TVs. On our internets. In our lives and not just in our hearts like always. How dare he miss such a tremendous opportunity. Truly, life is cruel. Maybe we don’t deserve that much. Who knows? What a guy.

It all starts on Monday Night Raw where, disgustingly, Roman is not permitted to open the show. Instead, enjoying his current feud with the hashtag best in the world Shane McMahon, we would first see Roman’s altruism: allowing a member of his family the honor and the prestige of competing with the billion dollar prince. Sadly, due to an extreme case of the Drew McIntyres, this would not be the most successful of attempts.

As usual, with any hero, Roman would save the day before any real damage could be done. By that I mean he would apparently watch calmly in the back to give his cousin every opportunity to be as thoroughly mauled two-on-one as possible before eventually emerging to a glorious fanfare.

It was his usual fanfare. Yeah, the “WWE Universe” definitely needs more Roman Reigns every week.

The standard beat down would follow, wherein Drew McIntyre does his usual thing of protecting someone with a much better push than him, before the segment would end with a roar of fury. I wonder if this cousin is also appearing in Hobbs and Shaw. Or is that what I’m supposed to think. I don’t even know with this company any more.

Shane McMahon would win the match. Naturally. This whole thing definitely means we’re all very, very excited to see Shane take on Roman in [name redacted]. I can’t wait. What a match that’s going to be, wherever it is.

More things would happen on this week’s Brock Lesnar show, but nothing involving Roman, so let’s just leave the red brand in the safe hands of its champion Kofi Kingston. If there’s one thing I know, it’s who the top guy is on each brand.

Roman. It’s Roman. Or maybe Brock if he keeps dancing like that.

Anyway, we go across to the blue side of the show now. You know, the side Roman supposedly actually works on. Once again, we are robbed of the chance to see the big dog from the off. You want to know why ratings are so low, WWE? Not enough Roman. Make the man 24/7 already! Instead we start with Kofi Kingston again. Talk about endless push. Why is nobody booing Kofi’s push already? Just because he’s got stupid charisma and talent doesn’t mean he’s immune to the ire of the fans, right?

Once again we had to wait a long time during Smackdown. We could see lesser remembered names such as Bayley – the actual blue women’s champion – and Daniel Bryan – who is legitimately Daniel Bryan – during the show, limiting the time we could possibly have with Roman on screen. Do we really need to see them? They’re not important. If I can be serious for a moment, I’m only here to see the big dog and his wet hair.

Once again, we opened with Shane McMahon talking for far too long about Roman Reigns. Roman’s not doing a lot of talking at the minute, is he? Is he trying to stop shouting “so Dean went to AEW, huh?!” or is he just a bit angry? Who can tell.

On the blue brand, Roman would make another heroic rescue, this time of his other cousin, R-Truth. He’s all about family, you see. Truth would be bullied by The Shane McMahon Experience. They’re only missing Lashley for their random barber shop quartet, I swear. Truth would have his title robbed. The incredibly important 24/7 title is of course the one I mean, despite it thus far only being defended during actual mainstream WWE programming.

As you might expect, Truth losing his title results in a tag team match. Truth and Reigns – family first – against Elias and McIntyre. There’s another band gag in there somewhere, but I’ll leave you to find that on your own. If you look really really hard, it’s there. Promise.

Roman lost. Nah, only kidding. R-Truth took his half-destroyed body down to ringside and got the glory of being there while Roman pretty much fought and won a handicap match. If Shane and Lashley had been there, maybe it would have been fair.

Slowly but surely, we might actually end up with a feud here. That is, of course, while Randy Orton takes time off before that much better feud begins. Shane McMahon who?

Odds Counter
– Shane McMahon
– Drew McIntyre
– Elias
– Drew McIntyre again

Did Roman Reigns beat the odds?
Yes

Definitely can’t be wasting time on that 24/7 title though.