SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
This year, WrestleMania is going back to Las Vegas for the second year in a row.
With Roman Reigns winning the Royal Rumble, he had a big choice to make. Would he challenge Drew McIntyre for the Undisputed WWE Championship, or would he challenge C.M. Punk for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship?
He confronted Punk on the February 2, 2026 episode of Monday Night Raw, bringing up some controversial comments when he left WWE and their history before that. These two men had a lot of history with and against each other. Perhaps that’s why Reigns chose Punk to fight at WrestleMania.
In celebration of this upcoming match, the WWE YouTube channel added another video to their WWE Playlist series. This time, it focuses on every single match that Reigns and Punk had against each other on the main roster.
This video showcases their intense rivalry ahead of their clash at WrestleMania, showing how Punk and Reigns butted heads many times over the years. The only time they faced each other in a one on one match was on the January 6, 2014 Raw, which was just three weeks before Punk left WWE.
Most of the matches in this video were of multi-man tag team matches when Reigns was teaming with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins as the Shield.
That makes this upcoming match more interesting, as it’s been over a decade since their only one-on-one encounter. However, I really enjoyed the tag team matches, as they give important context to their triple threat match with Rollins at WrestleMania 41. Reigns was paired with Rollins in these matches, but after the latter’s betrayal, their relationship has never been the same.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
Check out the latest episode of the Wade Keller Podcast weekly Tuesday Flagship: CLICK HERE to stream (or search “wade Keller” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other iOS or Android app to subscribe free)
Overall, this was a great video going over the history of Punk and Reigns. However, I wanted to see some videos of them in Punk’s storyline with the Rock ahead of the 2013 Royal Rumble. They started out helping him, but during that time they separated from each other. That was the root of their rivalry, and clips of that would’ve given more context clues about their feelings towards one another. They started off as allies and then they had a rivalry before Punk left.
Reigns let all of those thoughts out during his promo. There should’ve at least been a hint of what he was talking about in this video for people who weren’t watching at the time. Other than that, this video definitely got people excited for their clash at WrestleMania 42 in two months.
There’s no doubt that they’ll meet again in the ring before that, though, so this video provided an exceptional backstory for their feelings towards each other.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.