The WWE universe and fan base was shocked to learn that current champion and bright star, Seth Rollins, tore his ACL yesterday. It’s also led to the WWE announcing that they’ll hold a tournament for the WWE title at Survivor series.
Many people would say that giving the title to Roman Reigns now that Seth is injured would be the easy route for the WWE, but on the contrary it’d be the hardest decision they could make.
The easy route would consist of brining back an established superstar to hold the title heading into WrestleMania. John Cena can be summoned from his reality show to capture the title and sell merchandise to little children, but we’ve seen the Super Cena storyline way too often. There’s also the open of having Brock Lesnar win the title and disappear with it like he’s done in years past but that relegates the title nearly worthless. The best retread option would be to clear Daniel Bryan to return and have him win the tournament to recapture his belt. Even that is a long shot due to the health issues of Bryan.
With that being said, it’s time to take a leap of faith and put the company on the back of Roman Reigns. Roman will make mistakes and have his stumbles but if the man has proved anything this past year it is that he doesn’t fold under pressure, he rises to the occasion.
Life you think back to this time last year, many people weren’t sure if Roman could wrestle a match longer than 10 minutes and had questions about his move set. Since then he’s had great matches with Brock Lesnar and Bray Wyatt. He even managed to make an irrelevant feud with Big Show exciting (the spear running from one announce table to the next was amazing).
Sure, Reigns still has his limitations on the microphone but every champion in WWE history hasn’t been a great talker. It’s similar to what we are seeing in the NFL with Colin Kaepernick, why try to make a scrambling quarterback into a pocket passer? Reigns does best as an enforcer and ass kicker, so let him be that. The WWE can play up the “undeserving champion” angle and have Reigns foes talk about how unworthy he is to hold the belt and the Reigns Superman punches them and says, “believe that!” It’s a simple formula that fits where his talents are now and the bright lights of being champion could open up a side to Reigns that people have doubted he was capable of showing.
If Reigns doesn’t prove to be an adequate champion then the WWE can structure a storyline to put the belt back on one of their easy options but we’ve seen that the way to build a future isn’t by letting the past linger, it is by giving the youth of a talented roster a chance to shine.
Roman Reigns time to shine is right now, during wrestling’s “down time.” It’s a time where he can experiment with his character as champion and build up to what the WWE expects him to be by WrestleMania.