Well, that was an interesting match for the main event of WWE Payback.
There was no way that the WWE was going to let Roman drop the belt on his very first PPV title defense. They’ve got too much invested in him being their headline guy for the next decade, and he absolutely had to win here in order to be a credible champion.
HOWEVER, they went out of their way to make AJ Styles look as strong as possible as Roman Reigns’ peer. Great back and forth action, some interesting bits as the match had two false endings only to get restarted in order to get a conclusive victory, and the ending was booked in such a way that it was clearly anyone’s game. This was an absolutely solid match, and kudos to both performers.
Furthermore, they’ve already announced that AJ and Reigns will get a rematch at the next PPV, Extreme Rules, which is absolutely the right choice. Now as to whether or not AJ will win the followup — that’s anyone’s guess, and there are a lot of compelling reasons to let that happen.
Three things that didn’t happen, though:
1) No Finn Balor. It was thought that he might participate in the run-in by Anderson and Gallows, on account of their shared past from Bullet Club in Japan. No sign of him, no mention, but we might still see him show up on Raw tomorrow, you never know.
2) No clarification on Styles’ connection to Anderson and Gallows. They’re still leaving it ambiguous as to if AJ even asked for or wanted his old comrades’ help in this. That’s fine, but they’ll need to answer that question eventually.
3) No heel turn for Reigns. The WWE is still trying to push Reigns as a face, but even they can’t (or at least shouldn’t) ignore that the crowds are just not going to support Reigns right now. Give Reigns a year or two as a heel to give his persona some teeth, and to let the crowd get into him organically, and he’ll make a great primary hero-champ one day. But right now, it’s just too soon. Turn him heel, let him be the guy that the audience loves to hate, and you could still keep the belt on him — but the longer you try to pretend that the crowd loves him when it’s clear that they don’t, the more likely that you will kill Reign’s long-term career prospects.
I dunno what people are waiting for for this heel turn. Should he punch out Renee Young or something? He was 100% in the heel role last night IMO – he punched AJ in the dick! He got boo’d out of the building! – and it made the match really enjoyable. I think they’re walking the tweener line with him over the short-term but if they keep booking him against AJ, who may be the most over babyface in the company, he’s totally a heel in every way that matters.
That said, I think they’re actually being pretty smart about walking the line. The woman behind me in the crowd (with 2 young kids) was a HUGE Roman fan, and was explaining to her kids how AJ was cheating by having his buddies come in to help him. Us smarks are happy that the Good Brothers are there at all and intrigued at which way the storyline will go, while the Reigns fans still have something to cheer him for when he overcomes that numbers game. And we all get dope matches.
The WWE doesn’t want to acknowledge him as a heel, though. They present his win at WM as this big triumphant moment, with children cheering, rather than “oh, the BAD GUY won, and now we need a hero to save us from Roman Reigns’ reign of terror.”. The tweener approach really isn’t working for him, and he isn’t being allowed to be a heel on the mic. Even the nutpunch was clearly booked to be unintentional.
Regardless, the match was awesome.
I keep wondering if the Roman Reigns storyline is some kind of thought experiment being conducted by the WWE. “If we keep telling the audience they love something, can we make it true?”
I think Finn’s definitely getting called up, and soon. Didn’t he have a minor ankle injury? If so, maybe they’re trying to heal it up. Or they’re waiting to debut Finn as the AJ/Bullet Club program progresses.
I don’t disagree that the match was overbooked, but it was something different, and all told, AJ “won” (non-title change) over Reigns twice, and to his credit, Roman sold the shit out of being beat to hell after the bell rang. Definitely telling the story that AJ took Reigns to his very limits. I agree that the match made AJ look like a million bucks and absolutely on the same level as the WWE Champion.
I’m fascinated by what they’re doing with Reigns. Personally, I kind of like what they’re doing. At this point, the well with Reigns is tainted to the point that I doubt he’ll ever get a pure face pop outside of something like coming back from a long absence after getting shot while saving orphans. Slotting him into that same space as Lesnar resided in his last reign – the guy who shows up, wrecks shop, leaves and doesn’t really care what you think about him – could work out in the long run if there are merch and the love of younger fan considerations that prevent him from the full heel turn.
If they don’t do an AJ heel turn – which, giving how loved he is by the fanbase, would be terrible – I think we could be setting up for an AJ/Finn Balor program. Plenty of history, since they’re acknowledging stuff that happens in NJPW, Finn could be angry about AJ taking co-leadership of the Bullet Club after Finn/Devitt got booted out. Or maybe you team AJ and Finn against Gallows and Anderson if they’re going to push Finn as a face.
For what it’s worth, I’m actually excited about where more than one story in WWE on the main roster is going. There really has been improvement.