Yesterday, I wrote part 1 of why I personally thought The Head of The Table is not working. The replies to the article were quite interesting to read, especially from those angry at the editorial without even reading it. On this part 2, I’ll go more on depth on certain aspects that work and do don’t work with Reigns’ current run.
First, The Head of The Table has been Roman Reigns’ best work as a singles wrestlers. This is a fact and it was mentioned on part 1. I repeat this because some people ignore that paragraph entirely. Roman Reigns has found a character he is comfortable and Roman deserves the praise he is getting every week. His promos are far from those we saw back in 2015 that did him no favors back in the day.
WWE finally did the right thing and took The Shield vest away from Roman and gave him a new theme (this was later). Roman was finally out of The Shield look, something that Dean Ambrose (now Jon Moxley) and Seth Rollins did the first time The Shield broke up. Roman Reigns was finally himself.
The biggest issue The Head of The Table has right now is the lack of a credible contender. This is obviously not Reigns’ fault, but creative’s. Booking your champion strong is always good, but when you don’t have someone credible to take the title from Reigns, there’s a big problem. WWE has done a poor job building who will eventually dethrone Reigns’. One of the most popular names is Big E, but he’s presented more as midcarder than a main eventer so far, then again, WWE has time to change this.
WWE needs to build more credible contenders for Roman Reigns. The draft would be the perfect solution and allow for new match-ups for Roman Reigns. Drew McIntyre and Roman Reigns could have a money program. Right now, WWE is more interested on booking Reigns against part-timers than people from the roster for big shows.
Edge was supposed to be the first credible babyface to face Roman Reigns, but several weeks of Edge not increasing numbers on neither of WWE 3 brands (RAW, NXT and SD), WWE had to turn Edge heel and add Daniel Bryan to add interest to his WrestleMania Program. Again, this was not Reigns’ fault, but creative’s for not building the right program.
WWE is obsessed with booking Roman Reigns against The Rock and John Cena. Two programs that could be interesting for The Head Of The Table, but that are very unlikely to happen because of the busy schedule both legends have. This goes back to the point that WWE needs to build credible contenders and with the roster they have that should be easy to do.
The Head of The Table had a great start and the story was intriguing, but in my personal opinion it peaked to early, in particular on Hell In A Cell 2020 with Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso. Reigns and Jey Uso told a great story that was build for quite some time, but it also unfortunately peaked The Head of The Table stuff and everything after that has felt like WWE trying to replicate the magic Jey Uso and Roman Reigns had.
Numbers-wise, The interest for The Head of The Table has been going down for quite some time. Joe Lanza from Voices of Wrestling wrote an interesting analysis worth reading where he does in-depth on how the numbers and interest for Roman Reigns as The Head of The Table is going down. This goes back to my point that maybe the Head of The Table peaked around HIAC.
Another problem (this is also not Roman Reigns’ fault) is that most of his segments feel the same every week. This was also mentioned on part 1. It feels like an endless loop of the same stuff we see every week on TV. Nothing new is happening and the ratings are showing that’s the case unfortunately. Reigns’ yelling at The Usos and telling what to do was fun, but now is all what we see Reigns do every week.
Other criticisms that I’ve seen are that Roman Reigns’ matches can be a bit melodramatic and with mid-match monologues. Some of his matches do follow this pattern, but other show his more aggressive and dominate side, like his triple threat match at WrestleMania that we won by pinning Daniel Bryan and Edge at the same time (it was a cool visual), that’s so far is his best match of the year.
As mentioned before, most of the problems come from creative not being able to think of more things for Roman Reigns to do and lack of credible contenders for him right now. This is creative’s fault more than anything. Roman Reigns has done some of his best work and showed once more why WWE was wrong for not turning him heel for years.
