18 Ups & 15 Downs For WWE In 2023

2. Roman’s Invisible Title Reign

Roman Reigns is being celebrated regularly as the greatest champion of the modern era, but he also will close out 2023 making the fewest televised title defenses in the modern era.

The Tribal Chief has put his title up just five times this year, and only twice since WrestleMania 39. That’s an embarrassingly bad statistic considering that WWE merged both its world titles in 2022 and put them on Roman so he could vanish with them.

Then, in an epic self-own, they created a new world title, with Triple H admitting that Reigns never defending the two world titles was the reason they established the World Heavyweight Championship. That’s an astonishing moment, for the company to tell their fans that they know Roman being absent is a problem, but the only possible solution is to create a new title.

Roman’s absence is worse than at almost any point in Brock Lesnar’s runs with the two world titles. It doesn’t help that Reigns’ title matches have become overly melodramatic, paint-by-numbers schemes where you can see the Bloodline interference coming a mile away: Jimmy Uso at Elimination Chamber, Solo Sikoa at WrestleMania, and Uso at SummerSlam and Crown Jewel.

This might entertain a good segment of the fanbase, but Roman’s 1,200-day reign has been operating on smoke and mirrors for some time now, and at this point, they’re just padding out the length of the title run.