On June 2nd’s episode of Friday Night SmackDown, WWE celebrated Roman Reigns’ surpassing 1,000 days as champion. He secured the Universal Championship way back in August 2020 when he arrived late to defeat both Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt in a triple-threat match at the Payback premium live event. At WrestleMania last year, he would unify that strap with the WWE Championship when he defeated Brock Lesnar in what was dubbed the biggest WrestleMania main event of all time.
In the year since the Tribal Chief has looked unstoppable at the summit of professional wrestling. He has defeated all comers, including the likes of Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and even YouTube sensation Logan Paul. But his biggest victory perhaps came at WrestleMania 39 in April when he defeated 2023 Men’s Royal Rumble Match winner Cody Rhodes at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
Heading into the much-anticipated showdown between the Head of the Table and the American Nightmare, websites such as Bodog, which provides boxing and UFC betting, had made the challenger a -300 favorite to end Roman’s reign of terror. In the end, however, via some Bloodline shenanigans, it was the champion who retained, and now his title reign has no end in sight. But good things always come to an end, and here are two men that we feel may well be the ones to finally dethrone Reigns once and for all.
Cody Rhodes
The most obvious answer to the question of who dethrones Roman Reigns is the man that he most recently vanquished, Cody Rhodes. However, many wrestling fans feel that the perfect moment for that specific coronation was two months ago in California. There is a way that the American Nightmare could find himself thrust back into the limelight, however.
The night after his biggest defeat, Rhodes found himself on a collision course with former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. The Beast Incarnate flattened the American Nightmare with a plethora of massive F5s, which has set up back-to-back matches between the pair. They are currently one-for-one, with Rhodes getting the victory at Backlash and Lesnar returning the favor at Night of Champions.
They are expected to settle their rivalry once and for all at SummerSlam in August, and Rhodes is highly expected to get the victory. From there, he will probably feud with Seth Rollins over the newly created World Heavyweight Championship, and you can expect him to get screwed out of the title by another beast, perhaps in the form of a returning Bray Wyatt. That should keep Rhodes busy until the fall, when he will cross paths with Reigns once again, with the rivals captaining their respective teams at Survivor Series.
This will set the ball rolling on a rematch for the ages at WrestleMania. Rhodes will win the 2024 Royal Rumble next January and immediately set his sights on the Tribal Chief, ending Roman’s record-breaking reign at what will be a whopping 1,316 days.
Solo Sikoa
At the time of writing, Solo Sikoa is Roman Reigns’ closest and most trusted confidant, outside of his wise man Paul Heyman. The Enforcer of the Bloodline turned on his real-life brother Jimmy Uso during Reigns’ 1,000-day celebration, pledging his loyalty to his tribal chief once and for all, or so it seems.
As we have seen throughout the epic Bloodline story so far, eventually, Reigns pushes those closest to him too far. We saw it with Sami Zayn at the Royal Rumble. We saw it with Jimmy Uso at Night of Champions. In the not-too-distant future, we will see it from Jey Uso, and the final piece to fall will be Solo.
WWE teased dissension between the pair on the May 26th edition of SmackDown, with Reigns accidentally barging into Sikoa, and the pair would have a momentary stare-off before the champion scurried out of the ring. That has planted the seed of doubt in the mind of fans as to not if Solo will turn on the Head of the Table, but when. We imagine that won’t be too far into the future.
Once both Uso brothers, real-life brothers of the Street Champ, have turned their back on the Bloodline, Sikoa can set about the Tribal Chief just as Batista once set his sights on Triple H during their Evolution days some two decades ago. And there are a number of ways in which the enforcer can usurp Reigns as champion.
It’s hard to imagine that the record-breaking reign will come to an end anywhere other than WrestleMania. That would mean that Solo will have to enter and win the Royal Rumble match, perhaps even at the expense of Cody Rhodes. Then, with everyone thinking he will challenge whoever the World Heavyweight Champion is at the time, Solo will choose to face off against his Tribal Chief on the grandest stage of them all in Philadelphia next April, defeating Reigns and securing his spot as the WWE’s next breakout star.
