Everything Roman Reigns touches turns to gold lately, but even backstage it seems that sometimes this confidence is tested.
On the July 7th episode of SmackDown live from Madison Square Garden, The Usos put Roman Reigns on trial — or at least tried to — as the war between the splintered factions of The Bloodline continues. Although Reigns teased giving it all up and walking away, even placing his lei on the shoulders of Jey Uso, he quickly attacked with a thunderous low blow, kicking off a brawl that also saw Solo Sikoa get involved and Jimmy Uso eventually leaving ringside on a stretcher.
This set up the closing angle where Jey came back to the arena after leaving in an ambulance with his brother, and attacked Reigns and Sikoa, laying down a challenge to face the Tribal Chief.
The opening segment ran well over half an hour but helped the show stand tall in the television ratings.
Interestingly, speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted there was some concern within WWE that booking such a long segment could backfire.
“They brought that thing up too. Yeah. There was some other stuff too. I mean they, it was interesting because there were a couple of notes on that. Number one is, if there was a lot of concern, you know, debate going in, if going 30 minutes with that segment, you know, 35 minutes was overkill. They did it. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, it wasn’t because the number, you know, grew and grew and grew. And then after that, the rest of the show didn’t do anything special after that. It was just that.
And, the other thing was is that Jey Uso’s, the one who’s getting the next title shot at Summerslam, which is a major show, but for the long-term story, I mean, they had solo throw around Jey, throw ’em over the table, you know, destroy ’em and everything like that. Now, Jey did get revenge at the end of the show with the 10-chair shots. But the point is that this was not just, you know, like usually when they have when you got.”
Roman Reigns Segment Scores Monster Rating
While some backstage might have been worried about the length of the opening segment, that caution appears to have been misplaced. Once the final ratings were out, Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics reported that it averaged over three million viewers, which is higher than any wrestling quarter-hour in recent years.
H/t to WrestlingNews.Co