Roman Reigns Needs to Drop the US Title Immediately

As you might have heard, this Sunday at Roadblock: End of the Line, Roman Reigns is challenging Kevin Owens for the WWE Universal Title. Reigns has held the World Title on three different occasions and is gunning for a fourth. Now that’s all well and good as you can’t blame WWE for putting one of their top stars in the pay per view’s main event but it brings up one question: why is Roman Reigns challenging for the Universal Title while holding the United States Title at the same time?

This is a concept that WWE is getting a little too obsessed with in recent years and I’m rather tired of it. Last year United States Champion John Cena and Raw World Champion Seth Rollins feuded over both titles with Rollins holding both simultaneously. I really don’t see the benefit of this kind of storytelling as it ties up both titles in a single match instead of spreading them around the card.

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=AO5r_aPFAGM

Let’s focus on Reigns for a bit. For a long time now, I’ve thought that Reigns was in need of a midcard title run to give him some more seasoning (since three World Titles aren’t enough seasoning anymore). However, Reigns isn’t following more of the Dean Ambrose formula of only defending the title in one off matches and mainly using it as a prop. Picture Reigns out there every week ala Cena with the US Open Challenge. It worked for Cena and it would work fine for Reigns.

Instead, Reigns has defended the title four times since winning (that’s fine for a schedule as he’s only been champion about two and a half months) but his televised title defenses have been his rematches against Rusev and two against Chris Jericho. The Rusev matches were both solid and made sense with Reigns’ feud but then it falls apart. Reigns’ matches against Jericho were both good but both of them were part of Jericho’s feud with Rollins (more on that in a second) instead of being about the title.

That’s the problem here: Reigns just happens to have the title. No one is chasing him for the title and at the moment, Reigns is busy going after a bigger title (in a match that isn’t the most interesting in the first place). Owens has no interest in the US Title but that’s what we’ve been seeing on house shows. The house show main events lately have seen Reigns defending the title against Owens, because there’s NO ONE ELSE AVAILABLE to lose to Reigns. Why hurt the World Champion when you don’t have to?

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=IrKhrlrrVNE

Let’s look at that concept of no one else being available from another angle. Is there really no one else that could use the US Title? Like say, Rollins and Jericho? As in the Jericho who has never won the US Title and could chase it for months before winning it in a big moment? There isn’t much of a reason for these two to be fighting in the first place and for some reason the idea of putting the US Title in there is out of the question because Reigns just needs the belt.

I just don’t get how Reigns is benefiting from holding the title. The US Title can do wonders for a main eventer’s career (see Cena’s amazing reign from last summer) but at the same time it can be something just sitting there doing nothing. At this point the title is nothing more than a prop that people mention every now and then. Last night on “Monday Night Raw”, Reigns came in as the US Champion, challenged for the Tag Team Titles and held up the Universal Title to end the show. That’s pure overkill and taking away so many potential stories from other wrestlers.

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=M4GP1LYwsjk

Reigns is a very talented wrestler and hasn’t done anything wrong as champion. As is so often the case with him, Reigns’ booking is some of the worst in modern wrestling history. Having him hold the US Title is fine on paper but again we’ve seen WWE screw up every single part of it (save for the time between the bells, as is often the case with Reigns) due to reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Put the title on someone else (you can even do it without having Reigns lose) who can have feuds over the belt instead of it just being on Reigns’ shoulder every single week.

What do you think of Reigns’ title run so far? Who would you like to see get the title next? Let us know in the comments below.