5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - 19 Oct)
3. Leaning On Rich History
There are plenty of problems with Roman Reigns’ character portrayal as a smug, overconfident, and egotistical babyface who draws “OTC” chants at every turn, but his encounter with Sami Zayn still did something.
Maybe it’s their long history and callbacks to better days in 2022-23 when WWE was humming, but the show-opening segment between Roman and Sami clicked pretty well. Reigns and Zayn expressed their affection for each other, hugged, and talked about their shared experiences of the burden of being a world champion, the disrespect they face, and the pretenders who challenge them. Mind you, this was heel Sami carrying on and babyface(?) Roman agreeing at every turn.
Reigns then turned the lovefest into a recruitment pitch, trying to enlist Sami in the Bloodline’s feud against 946. He said that the most important title Zayn has held has been Honorary Uce and suggested Sami should once again stand with the Bloodline.
When Zayn countered that he was busy fending off his own challengers on SmackDown, Roman took aim at the Undisputed WWE Championship, calling it “a title” rather than “the title” that he holds. Things broke down from there, with Sami calling out Roman’s arrogance, and the Tribal Chief saying that the WWE Title “hasn’t meant sh**” since WrestleMania 40 (when he lost it).
Sami yelled back that Roman wasn’t going to minimize the title or his accomplishment winning it, becoming increasingly angry that Roman wasn’t even sweating him and their upcoming Crown Jewel champion-versus-champion match. This led Reigns to question whether Zayn would even be champ by the time the Saudi PLE rolled around.
Setting aside the screwy face-heel dynamics with Reigns being the under-fire babyface champion acting like a complete heel toward the other heel champion, Roman and Sami have always been great together, and the strength of that relationship carried this segment. The two will likely collide again in the week before Crown Jewel, so it will be interesting to see how they ratchet up the aggression and tension then.