Is Roman Reigns On His Way To The Universal Title?
Roman Reigns has made some headlines lately by directly stating his intention to face the Universal Champion at SummerSlam. The event, typically looked at as the second biggest occasion on the WWE calendar after WrestleMania, will take place on August 20 in Brooklyn. And though we don’t know the full schedule yet, Reigns wasn’t expected to appear in a title fight until he himself started talking about it.
It’s worth noting that the last time we started to hear rumors of a Universal Championship fight, ahead of this year’s WrestleMania, they proved to be true. Heading into the event, speculation was rife that Brock Lesnar would face Bill Goldberg, with Lesnar having obtained the title when he beat Kevin Owens at Fastlane. We now know that the rumors were accurate, as Lesnar and Goldberg faced off in the headline match at WrestleMania, with Lesnar ultimately retaining the title. That’s not always the way it goes in the WWE. Sometimes the sport winds up surprising us.
If that’s the case again, then Reigns vs. Lesnar could prove to be the fight of the year, surely bigger than anything that happened at WrestleMania. But it might all hinge on what happens at Great Balls Of Fire, a new event that will precede SummerSlam on the WWE calendar.
We already know some of the match-ups expected to occur at Great Balls Of Fire, and in a way they almost look like a semi-final setup leading to a Universal Champion bout at SummerSlam. Reigns will be in action to take on the newly returned Braun Strowman, while Lesnar is expected to put his title on the line against Samoa Joe. This sets up a couple of potentially interesting outcomes, though it seems very likely that Reigns will win one way or the other. In fact, one write-up even suggested that the WWE could be re-thinking Lesnar as champion, and that the upcoming slate is designed to raise Reigns to the role.
That could conceivably mean that Joe will defeat Lesnar at Great Balls Of Fire and set up his own Universal Champion bout with Reigns at SummerSlam. It’s worth noting that when Reigns said he’d be in such a fight, he never called out Lesnar—he just said he’d be challenging “the Universal Champion,” which could mean Joe if this scenario unfolds. Joe just defeated Reigns at WWE Raw, so there would be some bad blood in this kind of title match as well.
More likely, we’ll see Reigns get past Strowman at Great Balls Of Fire (Strowman had a role in Joe’s win at Raw, so there’s also animosity here). In all likelihood Lesnar will retain his title when he faces Samoa Joe. It would set up the biggest headline fight for SummerSlam, and we’d get to find out who the WWE values most as a champion between the stubbornly dominant Lesnar and the cocky and ambitious Reigns.
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