The long shadow over WWE

We are less than a month away from WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas. Cody Rhodes is defending the WWE Championship, and Roman Reigns is deep into yet another chapter of Bloodline family drama.

It feels completely normal now. But it feels like a lifetime ago that Roman held the big belt hostage for exactly 1,316 days.

Looking back, the Tribal Chief era was a weird beast. It gave us the best weekly television in a decade. It also gave us main events that moved at the speed of cold molasses and ended with identical interference spots.

Now that we have a couple of years of distance from the climax at WrestleMania XL, let's strip away the nostalgia. Let's actually look at the matches. Grab a drink. We are ranking the heavy hitters.

The Absolute Trash Tier

Extreme Rules 2021 vs. Finn Bálor

Let us start at the absolute bottom. I am still furious about this match.

WWE spent years building up Bálor's alter-ego as an unbeatable supernatural force. They get to the main event, and they actually have a surprisingly brutal, hard-hitting match. Bálor is literally convulsing on the mat, drawing power from the heartbeat sound effect playing over the arena speakers.

He climbs to the top turnbuckle for the Coup de Grâce. And then the top rope magically collapses.

The rope just snaps. Roman hits a spear and wins. No explanation was ever given. Nobody investigated it on SmackDown. Just a freak structural failure that neutered a top-tier gimmick. Absolute garbage booking that insulted everyone who paid for it.

Royal Rumble 2021 vs. Kevin Owens

This was a Last Man Standing match in the empty ThunderDome, and it was pure beautiful chaos until the final three minutes. Owens literally ran Roman over with a golf cart.

They brawled through the LED boards. Owens hit a Swanton Bomb off a forklift through a table. It was exactly the kind of car crash wrestling we needed during the pandemic.

But then we got to the finish. Paul Heyman was supposed to unlock handcuffs to free Roman before the referee counted to ten. The cuffs got stuck.

The referee literally had to stop counting and stand there looking like an idiot while Roman awkwardly sat on the floor waiting to be freed. It killed a magnificent brawl stone dead.

The "You Almost Had Me" Tier

Clash at the Castle 2022 vs. Drew McIntyre

Cardiff was ready to riot. The atmosphere in that stadium was deafening. Drew hitting the Claymore and getting the visual pinfall is one of the loudest pops of the modern era.

I was out of my seat. You were out of your seat. Then Solo Sikoa cosplays as a fan, pulls the referee out of the ring, and ruins everything.

Yes, it successfully introduced Solo to the main roster. But stripping Drew of his hometown crowning moment just to extend the reign another year and a half? It feels worse in hindsight.

Drew had to sing American Pie with Tyson Fury awkwardly to close the show while the crowd sat in stunned, angry silence. A massive missed opportunity.

WrestleMania 39 vs. Cody Rhodes

This is the match that broke the internet. For 30 minutes, they worked a flawless main event style. Dusty Rhodes references, beautiful counters, Cross Rhodes spam.

Then came the rubber chicken finish. Solo spikes Cody, Roman wins. At the time, I called it the worst booking decision since Starrcade 97.

I was wrong, considering the payoff we got a year later. But purely as a standalone match defense? It leaves a sour taste.

The Masterpieces

SummerSlam 2022 vs. Brock Lesnar

I am a sucker for stupid wrestling nonsense, and this was the peak of stupid wrestling nonsense. We had seen Roman and Brock wrestle roughly fifty times before this.

The matches were entirely composed of suplexes and spears. It was boring. So what did they do for the Last Man Standing match in Nashville?

Brock drove a literal front-end loader to the ring. He used the tractor to lift the entire ring off the ground, spilling Roman out of it.

Theory tried to cash in his briefcase and got obliterated. The Usos got buried under announcer table debris. It took Roman burying Brock under pieces of the broken ring to finally keep him down. Five stars for pure unhinged redneck anime action.

Crown Jewel 2022 vs. Logan Paul

I hate giving this guy credit. I really do. But we have to be honest about what happened in Saudi Arabia.

Logan Paul walked into his third professional wrestling match ever and took the most dominant champion of the modern era to the absolute limit. It makes no logical sense.

He hit a buckshot lariat perfectly. He hit a frog splash through an announce table while holding a phone recording himself. The pacing was flawless.

Roman played the arrogant champion perfectly, constantly underestimating the YouTuber until he was forced to actually fight for his life. The interference from Jake Paul was completely unnecessary, but the core match was a shocking clinic. It proved Roman could literally work with anyone and make them look like a million bucks.

Elimination Chamber 2023 vs. Sami Zayn

Montreal was rabid. I have never heard a crowd hate a human being as much as they hated Roman that night in Canada.

Sami was the ultimate underdog. The match itself was basically 1980s southern tag team psychology mapped onto a modern main event. Roman trash-talking Sami's wife at ringside was peak villainy.

He was vicious, slow, and methodical. The inevitable loss broke my heart, but the ride was flawless.

The visual of Sami hitting the Helluva Kick and the referee taking a bump is permanently burned into my brain. We all knew Sami wasn't winning, but for 2.9 seconds, they made us believe he could.

SmackDown (April 2021) vs. Daniel Bryan

This was a Title vs. Career match on free television. People forget how hard Roman could go in the ring before the Bloodline formula became strictly about monologues and referee bumps.

Bryan dragged a technical masterpiece out of the Chief. There was no Bloodline nonsense. Just two masters putting on a clinic.

The counter-wrestling was gorgeous. Bryan attacking the arm to neutralize the spear, Roman using pure power to break out of the Yes Lock.

Bryan passing out to the guillotine choke in exactly 27 minutes was a clean, decisive, brutal end to his SmackDown run. It proved Roman didn't always need cheap heat to look like a monster.

Hell in a Cell 2020 vs. Jey Uso

This was an I Quit match that barely even relied on weapons. It relied entirely on trauma. The ThunderDome era sucked, but this match was the diamond in the rough.

Roman crying in the middle of the ring, manipulating Jimmy Uso, and locking in the guillotine to force Jey to quit to save his twin brother.

This wasn't a professional wrestling match. It was a Shakespearean family tragedy played out on a canvas. The trash talk was uncomfortably real.

This single match established the entire Tribal Chief character and laid the foundation for the next three years of television.

The Unbeatable Climax

WrestleMania 40 vs. Cody Rhodes

You cannot rank the defenses without putting the final one at the absolute top. It was Avengers: Endgame for wrestling nerds.

They brawled through the crowd. They smashed through tables. And then the final ten minutes happened.

John Cena hitting an AA on Solo. The Undertaker randomly showing up in the dark to chokeslam The Rock. Seth Rollins showing up in the classic Shield gear with a steel chair.

It was overbooked in the absolute best way possible. Roman losing the title because he couldn't let go of a ten-year grudge against Seth Rollins is the greatest piece of long-term storytelling WWE has ever executed.

He took his eye off Cody to hit Seth with the chair, and it cost him everything. It was a flawless ending to a historic run.

The Legacy of the Chief

The reign will be studied for decades. It had its deep flaws. The referee bumps got agonizingly repetitive. The part-time schedule was a massive drag on the rest of the roster.

But when the bell rang for a big stadium show, Roman usually delivered a memorable moment. Now we just have to survive whatever cinematic universe match we get at WrestleMania 41 in Vegas.

Acknowledge him, or don't. But you certainly cannot ignore what he built.