Deep Dive: Roman Reigns Vs. Jey Uso Was WWE At Its Absolute Best

Jey lost nothing from falling to his cousin in this manner. His character's pride will be dented, sure, though he lost to a man who looks more fearful in WWE's comic book universe than Thanos does in Marvel's. Not even a time-travelling Avengers force could have felled Reigns at Clash of Champions; Iron Man would have died in the first act.

And this storytelling - this simple, uncomplicated storytelling - is what WWE must return to over the coming years.

WWE Raw pulled 3.330 million viewers on this week in 2015. Five years later, it will hit roughly half of that for last night's show. A recent Variety Intelligence Platform survey quizzed 471 lapsed fans aged 18 or older on why they'd given up on professional wrestling, with 30% responding "it seemed more cartoonish than when I liked it," a combined 57% saying "storylines/characters were not as good/interesting," and 14% citing the content being "more geared towards children."

Reigns vs. Uso addressed all of these issues. This was a storyline straightforward enough for kids to invest in and understand without sacrificing the depth required to keep adults hooked. Although some of the match's expositionary trash talk bordered on hand-holding, at no point in the feud did it feel like WWE was taking your intelligence for granted. Besides, most viewers seemed to love the smack-talk.

This was a history-rich, competitive tale that straddled the line between sport-like and Sports Entertainment perfectly. It was everything the people surveyed by Variety said was missing from today's product when they spoke of cartoonish programming geared towards children.

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