As WWE appears committed to ensuring Roman Reigns achieves even more history with his WWE Universal Championship run, there’s one method that unquestionably helps his reign set more records: Just don’t have him wrestle.
That’s not meant as a criticism of the way WWE books Reigns, who it clearly feels has earned the “special attraction” label at this point of his career, but merely an observation. With Reigns title defenses coming few and far between at times, it eliminates the need for the company to have to build believable threats for him — a task that gets trickier the longer his time at the top continues.
It’s an especially relevant idea since Reigns is going to set another rare mark soon. On May 26, he’ll reach 1,000 days as WWE Universal Champion, a feat only four other wrestlers have achieved (though a total of five times, since Bruno Sammartino did it twice) with any of the company’s titles. That happens to be the day before the next time we’re likely to see Reigns defend his titles in Saudi Arabia at Night of Champions.
There’s another WWE premium live event this weekend when Backlash hits San Juan, Puerto Rico. But Reigns isn’t on that card, which is fine in and of itself. He’s had title matches at Royal Rumble (Kevin Owens) in January, Elimination Chamber (Sami Zayn) in February and WrestleMania (Cody Rhodes) last month. Reigns is due to take a show off.
What makes the timing a little unfortunate, however, is that it means Reigns is likely to walk right to the 1,000-day mark without even putting his titles in jeopardy. Sure, WWE could drum up a title match for an episode of SmackDown sometime this month, but that feels unlikely if it’s just going to have him defend the belts over Memorial Day weekend.
Reigns’ WrestleMania match with Cody Rhodes is likely to become the de facto bout that earned him the rarified four-digit title reign status. Maybe that’s fine since it came at the Show of Shows, but it’s a little bit of a shame there probably won’t be one final moment for WWE to try to create some doubt before he assumes his place in history.