The Triple H regime once again finds itself with an embarrassment of riches. Since fully seizing creative control this past January, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque has instigated a gradual overhaul on WWE’s premium live events. Big four shows continue to showcase a bulk of the roster, but the B-tier events are typically limited to five-match cards. This has allowed a variety of stars to enjoy that elusive main event slot, as the likes of Damian Priest, Solo Sikoa, Logan Paul, AJ Styles, and WWE World Heavyweight Champion Gunther have all headlined premium live events in the past five months alone.
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While all of those names had feuds that warranted closing the show, they also had one massive common denominator: no Roman Reigns.
After his record-breaking 1,316-day Undisputed WWE Universal Championship reign was ended at WWE WrestleMania 40, the Tribal Chief began a four-month sabbatical. He eventually made his return at WWE SummerSlamย in August to handle “Bloodline business,” attacking the self-proclaimed Tribal Chief Solo Sikoa. Reigns’s feud against The New Bloodline has continued in the weeks since on WWE SmackDown, culminating this past Friday when a contract was signed for a match at WWE Bad Blood: Sikoa and Jacob Fatu vs. Reigns and WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
WWE Bad Blood’s Embarrassment of Riches
WWE Bad Blood will host Reigns’s first match in six months. The bout itself will be the latest chapter in The Bloodline Civil War, a storyline that previously headlined WWE Money in the Bank 2023 and WWE SummerSlam 2023. And perhaps the biggest variable of them all, this will be Reigns and Rhodes’s first time joining forces, echoing WWE Survivor Series 2011 when generational rivals The Rock and John Cena tagged together.
And still, this match should not be the WWE Bad Bloodย main event. That spot still belongs to CM Punk and Drew McIntyre.
Punk vs. McIntyre has been one of the most uniquely-built feuds in the modern era. Back in January, McIntyre legitimately injured Punk, delivering a FutureShock DDT that tore his future rival’s triceps. As Punk embarked on his road to recovery, he sporadically showed up on WWE programming, interfering in McIntyre’s title matches at WWE WrestleMania 40, WWE Clash at the Castle, and WWE Money in the Bank.ย
McIntyre and Punk traded shots for six months before finally stepping into the ring with one another at WWE SummerSlam, the longest actively-built feud since Rock vs. Cena from the early 2010s. The two bitter rivals have faced each other twice now, each claiming one victory apiece. Neither of those matches headlined the premium live events they took place on, and understandably so. WWE SummerSlamย was main-evented by the WWE Championship match between Cody Rhodes and Solo Sikoa while WWE Bash in Berlin was closed by home-countryman Gunther defending his WWE World Heavyweight Championship against Randy Orton. In the Triple H regime, world titles take precedence.
The Roman Reigns (Now-Defunct) Rationale
That has been the Roman Reigns rationale for the past four years. Over the course of 1,316 days, Reigns reigned with a world championship. It wasn’t until the final year of his run that a second world championship was even introduced. Reigns only took a backseat on premium live event cards for the WWE Royal Rumble, as that show typically ended with the titular battle royal. Even when Reigns was working tag matches, headlining over Seth Rollins’s WWE World Heavyweight Championship defenses, the finger pointed back to his record-breaking time with the title as reason enough to place him higher on the card.
The question WWE must ask itself going into WWE Bad Blood revolves around which has more to lose and which has more to gain regarding that main event slot. Reigns and Rhodes are two bonafide generational talents. Their rivalry is the modern-day The Rock vs. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. How much star power do these two gain by closing a B-tier premium live event after headlining consecutive editions of WWE WrestleMania against one another? How much do they really lose by being the penultimate match?
Punk vs. McIntyre’s Headline-Demanding Blood Feud
Now, let’s look at Punk vs. McIntyre. Both of these men are on the precipice of smashing through that last glass ceiling to hit Reigns or Rhodes-level star power, and something that will catapult each to that next level is headlining a premium live event. And not just headlining a premium live event, as McIntyre and Punk’s WWE Clash at the Castle angle did close that show, but getting that main event slot over Reigns and Rhodes. Think about the message that sends to the fans: this rivalry is so massive that it is getting precedence over the company’s two biggest box office attractions.
WWE should want to create as many company pillar stars as possible, not fall into the John Cena trap of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Punk himself experienced it firsthand. His official christening as WWE Champion sat behind Cena and Rock teaming in a throwaway match against The Miz and R-Truth at WWE Survivor Series 2012. Cena and Rock, a white-hot non-title rivalry not unlike Punk vs. McIntyre, took precedence over Punk’s WWE Title defense at WWE WrestleMania 28. WWE even favored Cena’s nothing feuds with Big Show and then-WWE general manager John Laurinaitis over Punk’s fan-favorite series against Daniel Bryan throughout Summer 2012. How much would Cena’s star power then have dwindled by being lower on the card? How much bigger would Punk and the WWE Championship have been by headlining just some of those pay-per-views?
Match order communicates investment to fans. Main events matter. And the only way WWE can continue to create main-eventers is by putting them in that very spot.
WWE Bad Blood goes down on Saturday, October 5th.
