What if Roman Reigns never wins the Universal Championship again?

2. A focus on work rate

Maybe WWE is making a conscious shift toward a more work rate centric product.

Roman Reigns isn’t a bad in ring worker, and there’s a reasonable argument that the hardcore fans who rejected him during his initial big push were being too critical, or else Reigns has since proven them wrong in developing his skills. Even given his improvements, though, Reigns still isn’t a “work rate guy.” Unlike Seth Rollins or AJ Styles, we don’t typically expect for him to deliver excellent matches bell to bell, or at least not without an opponent who can do the lion’s share of the work to get there.

If Reigns isn’t top again—or at least isn’t on top of Raw—it could signal a more seismic shift to go back towards faces of the company of yore like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, with Reigns still a part of the company but not the centerpiece as WWE seemed to be setting him up to be.