Roman Reigns once again successfully retained his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at SummerSlam this past weekend, defeating Jey Uso in a “Tribal Combat” rules match at Detroit’s Ford Field stadium. “The Tribal Chief” wasn’t present at the post-show press conference, and Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer is now reporting that Reigns suffered some sort of injury early in the match and had to power through. The severity of the injury is unknown, though Reigns’ light schedule means he’d have plenty of time to recover before needing to step back in the ring again. He is not currently advertised for WWE’s next premium live event, Payback, on Sept. 2 in Pittsburgh.ย
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“He’s going to be back Friday, Roman Reigns got hurt in that match. I haven’t watched the beginning of the match over again, but I heard it was relatively early. I heard, you know, he got hurt. I don’t know the nature of the injury, I just heard that he worked the match hurt,” Meltzer said (h/t WrestlingNews.co).ย
Paul Heyman on Roman Reigns’ Run
Paul Heyman appeared on Reigns’ behalf during the SummerSlam post-show press conference and once again made the claim that Reigns’ run of dominance is only in the “third inning.” His record-setting world championship run is currently up to 1,073 days.ย
“We are just figuring this stuff out,” Heyman said. “We haven’t even hit our stride yet. If you want to take the arrogant approach, I’m sure Paul Levesque will tell you all the box office records that have been smashed. Every Friday night when we show up at SmackDown, we’re always told, ‘This is the largest gate of this and the largest gate of that.’ ‘This is the largest premium live event.’ ‘This is the largest WrestleMania.’ Okay, we can sit there and point to what clearly drove all this, and it’s the Bloodline, and when I say the Bloodline, I mean the Tribal Chief, Roman Reigns.
“There is so much more for us to master. It’s a craft, and it’s an evolving craft. It’s an ever-evolving form of entertainment,” he continued. “If you sit there and you think, ‘We got this, this is it, we’re cruising to WrestleMania,’ we’re going to be replaced, and we should be. If you don’t come at this with the greatest ambitions to be much better tomorrow than you are today and much better two days from now, then you’re not here to be the greatest of all time.”
Cody Rhodes Wants a Rematch With Roman Reigns
Meanwhile, Cody Rhodes told reporters after defeating Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam that he wants to make his way back to challenging Reigns for his Undisputed championship. He made a slight allusion toward Reigns before getting distracted by Seth Rollins and The Judgement Day on this week’s Monday Night Raw.
“I think everybody in the room probably knows what my plans are,” Rhodes said, refraining from saying Reigns’ name outright. “We were talking about finishing the story. Now, the thing that I’ve been saying to myself, saying out loud, saying while laying there on the mat is ‘get back.’ I want to get back to the situation that I was in, to the same scenario I was in, and fix that outcome. I’m not going to say specifically what that is, but I think we can all read between the lines, and the journey to get there is dang near next to impossible, it really is, including three (matches) with Brock Lesnar. That would be what I would hope, but consistently surprised, you never know. I don’t mean that as a tagline. With me, on Monday nights, you never know. It’s been a great surprise so far.”
