Roman Reigns and The Bloodline Just Gave WWE SmackDown Its Best Ratings In Three Years

By Connor Casey

Roman Reigns and The Bloodline's ongoing issues just gave Friday Night SmackDown its best ratings since 2020. Per Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics, the latest episode averaged 2.562 million viewers with a 0.73 rating. That's up from 2.158 million viewers and a 0.52 rating from the week prior, the highest total viewership since Dec. 30 and the best rating since Christmas Day 2020. The show was advertised not only to include Reigns' celebration of his 1,000 consecutive days as world champion but also to feature the fallout from Night of Champions when Jimmy Uso finally snapped on "The Tribal Chief."

The battle lines within the group were drawn at the end of the night with Solo Sikoa and Paul Heyman remaining loyal to Reigns while both of The Usos appear to be gone from the faction. The big question still centers around Jey's loyalties as he still hasn't fully turned his back on Reigns. 

Sami Zayn, who was at the heart of The Bloodline Saga for nearly a full year, recently spoke with After The Bell about how the storyline has set a new standard all WWE storylines going forward. Zayn and Owens successfully retained their Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships against Reigns and Sikoa at Night of Champions.

"My opinion, and halfway through the storyline and seeing the success of it, was that, 'Oh, I see what we've done here, we've accidentally stumbled into the future of storytelling in wrestling.' I think we've laid out a template. I also think, and I hope I'm not coming off arrogant, I don't think anyone will quite match it, only because of the variable involved in it, which are the real life relationship of 20 years of friendship with myself and Kevin (Owens), the real life family dynamic of the Bloodline. The real life relationship of Paul Heyman and the Samoan dynasty. All of those elements can't be recreated," Zayn said.

"You can have different versions of it, but hopefully, people aspire to do these long drawn out artistic, very emotional, clearly defined characters, I think that's the future," Zayn continued. "If the success, if nothing else, that's what people will aspire to achieve. I don't think anyone will in quite the same way, but he's hoping that someone does even something better one day. This is hopefully a template for what quality storytelling could be down in the road in this industry."

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