The main event segment saw Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman come face to face for the first time since the “Wise Man” stabbed his “Tribal Chief” in the back to join the side of Seth Rollins and what would come to be known as The Vision. But if the truth should be told, considering the precedent that early-to-mid Bloodline narrative development had set, this was a segment that vastly underdelivered on what it could have been. 

Heyman spent most of the opening moments berating the crowd and effectively letting them hijack the segment, and thus started a ticking clock towards the end of the show, and less time for something to actually unfold. He did offer Reigns a position as a stand-in for Rollins after his injury, but that was a hollow proposal at most and there was very little actually delved into before things inevitably turned to physicality. 

Reigns, as one would expect him to, made it clear he wasn’t going to take another deal with the devil; had it been five years ago, he said he would have done. But times have changed, backs have been stabbed, and there is too much water under that specific bridge. That’s the first classic babyface trope in the books. Then he said that was a move to be made by a “Wise Man,” but he’s not anymore; he’s just a dumbass, in Reigns’ words I must stress. He dropped the catchphrase, you know the catchphrase, the one where he wants the crowd to acknowledge him – originally rooted in insecurity embedded in the fabric of his heel persona, but now very much in the same league as “YEET” or “YEAH” but with a whole other word. 

That’s a previous heel flaw now flaunted as a hollow catchphrase – *whispers* for the sake of marketing – and that is certainly another classic babyface trope. Bron Breakker and Heyman did the whole, “Hold me back. Oh I’mma-” and Reigns then pulled at the low-hanging fruit to son Breakker off. But then Reigns continued to shut Breakker down entirely to close the segment, asking Breakker to repeat what he said through his mic, throwing it to him to catch and open him up for a Superman Punch. Potentially burying a young heel presented as dominant in recent months, well that is a classic babyface trope if ever there was one. 

Everything up until this point has been framed for your own interpretation, but the one that seems to prevail for me is the fact that Reigns has finally taken the intended spot as the company’s top babyface. He has technically been a babyface for quite some time, but it was in this segment specifically that Reigns had got into the groove as the cool badass he was originally intended to be in 2015. It was by no means his best character work, promo, or exchange in the ring, but there is very little he can actually do wrong at this stage in time.

Written by Max Everett