Roman Reigns Takes One Last Shot a Cesaro Before WrestleMania Backlash

Roman Reigns has made it abundantly clear in promos leading up to WrestleMania Backlash that he doesn’t take Cesaro as a legitimate threat to his Universal Championship reign. Hours before Sunday’s show he emphasized that statement on Twitter, writing, “Waited a long time to get knocked down to the bottom of the line.” “The Swiss Superman” first tried to get Reigns’ on the first SmackDown following WrestleMania 37, but Reigns immediately left the ring without even acknowledging him.

“The Tribal Chief” instead gave Daniel Bryan one last shot at the world title and beat him (forcing Bryan to leave the SmackDown roster). Cesaro then earned his spot as No. 1 contender by beating Seth Rollins, all while Reigns was preoccupied with Jimmy Uso returning to television and being reluctant to fall in line as a member of Reigns’ faction.

Cesaro talked about his journey to becoming a world championship challenger in an interview with ComicBook days before the show.

“It means the world to me. It means that hard work pays off and it means that all the pain and sacrifice was worth it, and that… It doesn’t mean that I will stop working less hard, by the way. It sounds like, ‘Oh, you’ll reach the goal. Now just go eat some cake.’ But to me, it’s kind of looking back and all the sleepless nights or doubts that I had, they were not justified. I’m challenging for the universal title this Sunday. And I feel like there’s a lot of people that came on that journey with me, and because it took so long, it means so much more,” Cesaro said.

“And if you would’ve told me that, and certain people did tell me that, when I just started in WWE, it was a year into it, and they were like, ‘Oh for you, it will take a while, but you’ll get there but it just… It takes a while.’ You don’t want to hear that. Whatever you’re like, ‘Oh, what about this guy who just walks in and gets a title shot?’ But now I feel people can relate to that and that makes it so much more special. So I’m very nervous and I’m super excited for Sunday.”