MONDAY NIGHT REIGNS-O-METER #94: Tracking Roman Reigns’s ability to beat the odds and come out on top

By Tom Colohue, PWTorch Specialist


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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 favourite 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.

If there’s one thing we’re certain of, it’s that Roman Reigns is definitely a Raw Superstar maybe. In fact, let’s just be real, are we certain of anything? Roman is an enigma! He’s a mystery. He’s an uncracked code. Seriously, which brand is he on?

Roman opened both shows this week, showing his versatility first by beating up The Revival and then later on by beating up The Revival. The eternal wild card, and pretty much the man that the wild card was made for, we’re going to be seeing a lot of Roman Reigns in the future, I feel.

I have to ask though, is this feud with Shane McMahon working for Roman? Don’t get me wrong; there are benefits. Elias’s connection with Shane McMahon, seemingly over now, gave him a couple of good spots, but didn’t give him anything in terms of storyline or character development.

Then there was Daniel Bryan and Rowan’s connection with Shane McMahon, in which they became tag team champions at the expense of The Usos, then lost at a pay-per-view to The Usos and then promptly vanished completely. Seriously, where is Daniel Bryan? Is this corporately-sponsored time off? Is he expected to have a second half of the year so busy that they’re giving him all his time off now? Also, where’s Rowan, I guess.

Now, of course there’s Drew McIntyre’s connection with Shane McMahon. Is this helping Drew? He’s a licensed badass. Admittedly, yes, it’s helpful for him to be feuding with a top name like Roman Reigns, and he came out of the Raw six-man tag looking like his usual beast-mode self, but why is it that Drew McIntyre is constantly somebody else’s backup? From Dolph Ziggler, to Ziggler and Braun Strowman, to Baron Corbin and Bobby Lashley, on to just Corbin and finally now on to Shane McMahon. McIntyre is in danger of getting the “Best Henchman” award through no fault of his own.

The Revival are in Shane’s pocket now, apparently. Only time will tell how that’s going to work out.

So it’s not working for anyone that Shane has working for him. How about The Miz, who was feuding with Shane McMahon until last month when both men seemingly forgot about it completely? How’s this whole thing working for him? Well, he’s interviewing again. Being fair, he’s very good at it so I’m not going to complain about that one. That said, he has no feud and has seemingly just abandoned the impassioned defense of his father that was his driving force since January. Not really working for him, is it?

Finally, we get to Roman Reigns. How is this working for him? Well, he’s getting beaten up on the regular by Shane McMahon. How do you think that’s working out for him? He’s having to sell those punches. You know the ones. Those punches. Nobody wants to sell those punches. I mean, everyone’s extremely professional, particularly when it comes to the questionably legit boss. They sell them. They just don’t want to sell them. If I were a wrestler, I would sell them, but I woudn’t want to sell them.

Glad we’ve sorted that debate out.

Oh, and now they’re building up a whole side-story where Shane wants to tap Roman out. People hate Roman. Do they hate him enough to want him to tap out to the flip flop flier-in-chief himself? Probably, yeah. Got to be honest. Probably.

Who is this feud working for? Vince, I guess. Roman haters? There are a lot of them. At least we can confidently say that if there’s one thing unique in wrestling right now, it’s the idea of a heel authority figure.

On Raw this week, Roman was assaulted by the odds. Oh so very many odds. The inescapable, unstoppable odds. The monsters. Is there no escape for Roman?! He might have never encountered odds these bad before!

He got attacked by The Revival. From behind.

A match broke out shortly afterwards. A match that had been planned the whole time. The Revival were always supposed to be fighting with Roman. How he didn’t see them coming, I will never know.

A fight broke out afterwards. A fight that had been previously announced and hyped up, of course. There was some fighting. There was some hot tagging. It was a WWE tag match, I think we all know exactly how it went down. Finally, with Roman distracted by the sheer awesomeness of Shane McMahon’s aura, he would eat a Claymore kick and go down. The match would end shortly after, with Drew pinning Jimmy Uso after another of his video game style flying kicks.

The post-match beatdown involved Shane McMahon hitting the spear. It wasn’t as bad as those punches and that’s all I’ll say about it. Okay, look, he basically DDT’d himself. That’s not good considering he got massively concussed taking a spear at Survivor Series a few years ago. Respect your own skull, you maniac!

After that, it started being all about Seth Rollins, but who’s interested in that, right? He’s only the best in the world. Roman Reigns!

We move on to Smackdown Live. Funnily enough, there was even more attention on the Roman Reigns vs. Shane McMahon feud. Who’d a thunk it, eh? At least this time it was brief.

Roman Reigns was attacked by the odds. Yes, that means The Revival again. They had a good run on Raw but on Smackdown they were more using the Wildcard rule to be there as cannon fodder. McIntyre still got to look good at least, but, more importantly, Shane McMahon continued to prove that he was the man. Not The Man, obviously, but the man. I think the title of The Man has been surgically transferred to Becky Lynch for life now.

Odds Counter
– Shane McMahon
– The Revival
– Drew McIntyre
– Shane McMahon
– The Revival
– Drew McIntyre

Did Roman Reigns beat the odds?
No

Was a nice spear though, wasn’t it?


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