The seemingly unbeatable champion has been an archetype in professional wrestling for decades, but Roman Reigns has taken the concept to a new level. As the current holder of both the WWE Universal Championship (a title that’s been in his possession for more than 650 days) and WWE Championship, he’s the undisputed WWE world champion, and after vanquishing Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 38, he didn’t have any immediately obvious challengers to his throne.
That kind of dominance is rare in the 21st century, but if there’s one certainty that has to be acknowledged, it’s this: Someone will eventually beat Reigns.
Because of the way he’s been positioned, it’s unlikely that Reigns will lose on a random episode of Raw or SmackDown, and he didn’t even have to worry about a Superstar cashing in the Money in the Bank briefcase on him until recently. That makes SummerSlam the first logical point for a true threat emerge — either in his scheduled match or a cash-in afterward — and if he survives Nashville, it’s not a stretch to think he could still be the undisputed champion when WrestleMania 39 rolls into Los Angeles in 2023.
Needless to say, it can’t be just anyone who ends up toppling Reigns, as it will be a massive story when it happens. That narrows the list of potential candidates, but here are a half-dozen ideas for who might finally get the honor of saying they dethroned the Tribal Chief, in rough order of ascending plausibility.
Brock Lesnar
Yes, Lesnar had his shot at Reigns in Dallas, and if WWE wanted him to run with the unified titles, it would have, you know, just given him the win there.
That said, Lesnar will remain a main event attraction for as long as he wants to keep working for WWE, never far from the championship picture. His credibility speaks for itself; along with his long list of accomplishments in pro wrestling and MMA, if you just showed a picture of Lesnar to someone who didn’t follow sports entertainment, they’d say that’s the guy who should be champion.
This would be the least inspired choice, but not one that insults fans’ intelligence. WWE is billing the SummerSlam match as their final showdown, so if Lesnar doesn’t beat him there, he’s out of the picture. Unless WWE needs him again, that is.
Bobby Lashley
Like Lesnar, Bobby Lashley has the look of a person who could defeat Reigns — and he’s done it before, winning by pinfall at Extreme Rules in 2018. Yet an extended program would still feel relatively fresh, as the two have met more often in multi-person matches than they have one-on-one.
There’s a perception that Lashley is charisma challenged, but he’s proved to be a capable talker who doesn’t necessarily need a manager to serve as a mouthpiece. His feud with Omos showed a different side of him as well, as he’s rarely been the smaller combatant.
Holding both titles simultaneously would be a big step up for Lashley, but maybe capturing one of them from Reigns would work. Keep an eye out if Reigns still holds both championships after SummerSlam, as Lashley’s chances go up in that case.
Kevin Owens
Now for something completely different. On the surface, Kevin Owens doesn’t leap out as the Superstar to showcase as an undisputed world champion. He’s also more natural as a heel, with an innate ability to push people’s buttons, and the physically smallest of the wrestlers on this list.
But fans love Owens when he’s a face, and giving him a run at knocking off Reigns would be a very popular move. He’s beloved by hardcore fans who have followed him since his indie days as well as WWE loyalists who appreciate all he’s done since he signed with the company in 2014.
And speaking of loyalty, Owens could easily have chosen to depart for AEW or elsewhere when his contract was up toward the end of 2021, but he re-committed himself to WWE. Repaying that by allowing him to be the man to finally end the reign of Reigns would be fitting. He just needs to get over his Elias/Ezekiel/Elrod fixation first.
Drew McIntyre
There was a time when it would have been laughable to suggest Drew McIntyre would be in this position, but since his return to WWE in 2017, he’s proven to be a top star. He’s even made it all the way to the top of the mountain, winning the WWE Championship twice.
Those two title wins famously came during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, meaning McIntyre has never been able to bask in the adulation of the WWE Universe as champion. Tapping him to defeat Reigns would be the ultimate make-good move.
When McIntyre had drifted away from the title picture for a spell, it didn’t seem to lessen how over he was with live crowds. The guess here is that he’d take both titles from Reigns if that’s the way WWE decided to go, as he’d be a believable undisputed champion. Clash at the Castle would make a lot of sense if WWE was going to have McIntyre dethrone Reigns.
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Cody Rhodes
It’s telling that upon his much hyped and anticipated WWE homecoming, Cody Rhodes immediately made it clear that his goal was winning the world championship his legendary father never did (in WWE, at least). That’s something too big to signal if it isn’t going to pay off somewhere down the road.
That doesn’t mean Rhodes is going to be the one to beat Reigns, but it does suggest one of two things: Either he’s going to get a shot at it, or he’ll be a top contender when someone else has finally managed to snag one or both of the titles.
There is some skepticism that Vince McMahon would be eager to make someone whose career kicked into overdrive in other companies into his top champion, but the same thing could be said for McIntyre and he was given the ball at a critical time. Rhodes needs to heal up from his pectoral injury before we see what WWE has planned for him.
The Rock
It’s been widely rumored that The Rock would challenge Reigns at some point — so much so that some fans were expecting him to appear at the end of WrestleMania 38 to set something up for 2023. It wasn’t a stretch since WWE has shown that kind of long-term thinking before, but the night ended and Dwayne Johnson was nowhere to be found.
Yet it could easily still happen. Reigns spent the week after WrestleMania claiming total victory and focused on sending The Usos to unify the tag team championships. He had the feel of an MMA fighter or boxer who has cleared out their division, with no immediate threat to his supremacy on the horizon.
With that in mind, bringing in someone who’s not a regular at this point becomes more sensible. And there’s arguably no subplot as compelling as having The Rock — who isn’t related to Reigns by blood but is unquestionably linked through the greater Samoan pro wrestling family — coming back to point out how the Bloodline has gone too far.
In terms of mainstream appeal, a Rock-Reigns matchup would be hard to top, especially as a headliner for WrestleMania 39 in Hollywood, where Johnson has established himself as a megastar. The longer Reigns goes with the two championships in his possession, the more this feels like something that will evolve beyond dream booking into a real likelihood.