Everyone in the WWE universe has to be excited that Roman Reigns worked double duty this past week, having a match on Raw and SmackDown (this might due to the fact that his match on SmackDown was very short). This suggests Roman may be getting closer to returning to WWE on a full-time basis. He is the cornerstone of the company at the moment so that’s a huge development.
Another big WWE development was Kofi Kingston challenging Randy Orton to a WWE Championship match at SummerSlam. He referenced a match that took place nearly 10 years ago between Randy Orton and himself where he accused Orton of using his influence to hold Kingston back and prevent him from being established as a main eventer. Orton happily admitted to this and claimed that Kingston still isn’t ready to be WWE Champion. This is all storyline by the way and there is no real beef between Orton and King as far as I’m aware. Randy Orton may seem to have been around WWE for what seems an eternity. And he does have an awful lot of championships, but he is such a badass with the few words he does say. WWE may want to look into pushing Roman Reigns very similar to the way Orton is pushed if they plan on maintaining the same character for Roman. WWE did a great job of it this week on Monday Night Raw with the confrontation with Samoa Joe.
Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon should have a very entertaining match at SummerSlam. It was a good idea on WWE’s part to add the stipulation of Owens quitting if he were to lose because this will garner major interest. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. However, it will more than do its job to set up a first meeting since their Hell in a Cell match in October 2017 when Kevin Owens was saved by Sami Zayn.
Apollo Crews has to be feeling very encouraged by his match with the Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura. He was getting major pops from the crowd for all of his big moves (how could people not love his in-ring ability) and The New Day was freaking out. Speaking out that it was great to see The New Day for a little over half the show before they were replaced by Michael Cole and David Ottunga. Michael Cole is an expert by the way at the commentary table. He did a flawless job of switching roles to being more of a color guy and letting Tom Phillips handled the play-by-play stuff, which he has been doing for years on Monday Night Raw. He’s almost like a referee; no one noticed the change, so it’s not a big deal.
Side Note: Charlotte Flair and Ali seems to be in somewhat similar positions heading into SummerSlam. Flair is determined to ensure that she (as the greatest female superstar of all time which is very hard to argue) is a major part of the show. Ali, on the other hand, has a taller task ahead of him of rebooting his entire character. At this point he seems hard to envision as a heel, so WWE will probably elect to rebrand his face persona.