Every Roman Reigns WWE Universal Title Defence Ranked In Order Of Greatness
13. Vs Kevin Owens (Royal Rumble 2021)
A WWE Last Man Standing match that didn't just rely on 10-counts teases (and more on the best ever one of these elsewhere on the list...), this final 2020/21 meeting between the two tenured foes was the best of the bunch thanks to a heady combination of high stakes extremely creative violence.
If Owens had any real chance of securing the gold it was going to happen here. The start of the Road To WrestleMania was where 'KO' wanted to start his latest reign, but Roman claiming victory was in fact the start of the realisation that WWE were playing for keeps - a philosophy they'd literally double down on at the 'Show Of Shows' itself.
Making use of the ample space in a larger ThunderDome, the match looked and felt grittier than the ones that came before it, and peaked with a spot so fantastic that it belonged out of WWE's rotten covid canon.
Reigns ploughing through Owens with a golf cart was as devastating as it was brutal, and became the visual go-to for this bananas showdown rather than the uncomfortably long time Paul Heyman spent un-cuffing Roman from a metal truss at the finish.