Roman Reigns retained his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 39 earlier this month, all but guaranteeing his world title reign will break 1,000 consecutive days in the coming months. The decision to have Reigns retain against Cody Rhodes was highly controversial as many believe there was never a better time than to have Reigns lose and enter a new chapter of “The Tribal Chief” Saga while firmly establishing Rhodes as one of the top stars in the company. Pro wrestling legends gave their two cents on the decision over the past week on their respective podcasts and a few wound up on opposite sides of the argument.
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First, there’s Kurt Angle. As a former multi-time world champion and WrestleMania main-eventer in his own right, Angle argued that having a title reign lasting over three years is a bit too long in the current wrestling landscape.
“I’m not going to beat up on Roman Reigns because he is the man. He deserves to be,” Angle said on The Kurt Angle Show (h/t WrestlingNews.co). “But we’re in a time now where if you’re a champion for three years, that’s a little long. It’s just too long because we’re not in territories anymore. When you were in territories, you weren’t on TV every week so fans had to come see you at the arenas. You would only be in that city one day a week. So they only saw wrestling one day a week back then when they were champion for six, eight years.”
“…I don’t believe the ratings are gonna go down, but I do believe some people are going to lose interest because they’re not making other wrestlers. Roman has an opportunity to make a wrestler,” he continued. “He could have made Cody into a megastar, which Cody is already a star, but he would have been a megastar if he would have won at WrestleMania. That’s just my opinion.”
But on the other side, you have Kevin Nash, someone who held the WWF Championship for nearly a full year back in the mid-90s and was initially booked to hold the title for several years. Nash argued that WWE was right to make Reigns’ title run last at least a thousand days given how close he is to hitting that milestone.
“When you have 950 days behind somebody, you’ve got to get to a thousand (days). You have to. It’s like, if baseball was a work, you would make sure somebody surpasses (Barry) Bonds’ 73 home runs. You’d book that,” Nash said on Kliq This! before noting he’s fine with Roman’s reign lasting for many more years.
Which side are you on in the debate? Should Reigns drop at least one of the titles between now and WrestleMania XL? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
