12 Ups And 16 Downs For WWE In 2021

2. Reigns Conquers All

Roman Reigns Bloodline
WWE.com

An argument could be made that the Roman Reigns act is wearing thin because he’s cleaned out the main roster and is down to wrestling legends and part-timers, but that’s not his fault.

Reigns went wire-to-wire as WWE Universal Champion in 2021, beating all challengers along the way and having some of the better PPV matches in the company. His promo game is on-point, and his segments are the focal point of SmackDown. The falling out with Paul Heyman due to his potential involvement with Brock Lesnar has made for interesting speculation along the way.

Sure, his ring entrance eats up way too much TV time that could have gone to other matches and wrestlers, and the company has done a poor job building up challengers, but we’ve seen Reigns tangle with Kevin Owens, Daniel Bryan, Edge, John Cena, Finn Balor, Lesnar and King Woods this year, and he’s held up his end of the bargain.

Most importantly, Reigns has carried himself like a huge star. If (and that’s a huge “if”) WWE does it right, the person who finally knocks Roman off the pedestal should get a huge bump. If not, expect to see that in the “downs” column for 2022.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.