If things had gone differently, Roman Reigns would almost certainly be the WWE Universal Champion right now. After all, he was supposed to face Goldberg at WrestleMania 36, and nobody expected Goldberg to hold that belt for long. But Roman pulled out of WrestleMania out of health concerns due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and he was replaced in that title match with Goldberg by Braun Strowman. And sure enough, Strowman beat Goldberg and is now the Universal Champion. What’s more, WWE hasn’t even mentioned Roman on TV since Mania. In fact, this week’s Raw demonstrated the lengths they’ll go to not to bring him up.
With Money in the Bank coming up this weekend, Raw counted down the top Money in the Bank moments of all time, and of course #1 was Seth Rollins cashing in on the main event of WrestleMania 31. As you no doubt remember, that was a title match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, which Seth turned into a Triple Threat thanks to his MITB contract and thus won the belt. But you wouldn’t have known that from Raw’s replay of the cash-in, which neither showed Roman Reigns nor mentioned him.
It’s one thing to drop any angles Roman was involved in, since nobody knows when he’ll be back. But to avoid him so deliberately when recapping an event he was directly involved in really makes you wonder about his standing with the WWE brass. Nobody wants to believe that a company would hold a grudge against an immunocompromised cancer survivor for refusing to wrestle during a pandemic, but WWE is honestly kind of famous for holding petty grudges, so in moments like this it’s hard not to wonder.