There has been a big change to the announced Bloodline segment on Monday’s episode of Raw.
Instead of the acknowledgment ceremony for Roman Reigns featuring members of the extended Anoa’i family, the show will now feature ‘The Trial of Sami Zayn’.
BREAKING: After the events of last night’s #SmackDown, The Bloodline will hold a Tribal Court for the Trial of Sami Zayn this Monday at 8/7c on #RAWisXXX on @USA_Network!
Zayn will face a Tribal Court to answer for his recent actions, including not being around to prevent Kevin Owens from attacking The Bloodline on Friday’s edition of SmackDown.
It is not known whether the Tribal Court will include previous generations of The Bloodline including Afa, Sika, Rikishi and Samu, who had been expected to be part of the acknowledgment ceremony.
I hope so…there is no match I want to see more right now then Roman vs Sami at Mania and a Rock/Roman segment would make me think that Sami/Roman is not happening on the big stage.
Yeah dumping this means to me no Rock at mania. The entire “bloodline” stuff is losing steam big time and is being overexposed by appearing on Raw and SD.
And the bigger question is what’s the end game with all of this? I don’t think they have a logical one.
I don’t think major surprises are “wasting money“ if they are like Sting AEW debut where he didn’t do anything. It was basically an advertisement saying Sting was going to be on Dynamite.
But when it’s The Rock, I still think you advertise the crap out of it because, we’ll, it’s The Rock, So the fact that they have changed their phrasing to no longer imply (to the IWC) that Rock will be there is a solid sign to me that he won’t be.
I agree that it’s losing steam week to week, but they are also uncharacteristically smart to have not blown it off at Extreme Rules or Vengeance or… is Over the Limit still a thing?… just because they need a ratings spike.
The bumps in the road will be forgiven if the pay off — Roman losing the title on the right stage to the right guy — is executed.
Cody is better long term… because I have zero faith in how a face Sami title run would be handled. See: Kofi, Bryan, Benoit or any other time they momentarily “caved” to what the fans want.
Either Cody or Sami is maximizing what you’ve got available, but definitely not getting the most out of ending (if it’s this year’s Mania) an 800+ day title reign. Personally, I’d keep the belt on Reigns for now, but I’m also not the person who needs to come up with another years worth of storylines.
What you are saying is 100% valid, and if Vince was in charge I think Sami’s run would be a flop, the only redeeming part of it would like be “the win”. With that said, IF Hunter stays in charge of creative, I do have faith that he would know how to book Sami as the champ but with Hurricane Vince crashing down on WWE right now, I get that its a roll of the dice of who will be in charge come mania.
That’s the problem with making Reigns so strong - no one is close to his level. The Vince years have also destroyed so many prospects. There are no young guys on the rise coming up anytime soon.
The only guy I see as a possibility is Montez Ford but he’s been stuck in tag team hell for years and would need a long time to build up.
Why does Sami need any kind of a “run” with the title? Lets face it, in this scenerio they have with a near 900 day champion, they have absolutely 0 people who will benefit in the way you would hope. Even Cody winning, hes nearing 40 and if you extend the run, there is just no one I can see that would benefit in this company.
I think they need to go with the best story and the tried and true story of Sami winning the belt at Mania and then Kevin Owens immediately turns on him and destroys him and wins the title from Zayn within the month. I would personally do it on the Raw after Mania.
Cody can then take it off Owens later in the year.
I like the majority of that idea, but I’d probably have Owens go on maybe a 6month run to eventually have Sami take the belt back off of him. To have Sami loose then just drop down to the mid card IMO would make it all feel for nothing. I like the idea of the Owens turn though.
I’ve seen a few comments on this forum for Sami vs Reigns at WrestleMania and while I agree that would be great I have never even for a second considered it a feasible option.
For two and a half years since Roman Reigns started the “tribal chief” gimmick the endgame has seemingly been a match vs The Rock. Which could only happen at WrestleMania. For two years there has been rumor and hints of it. To go from Rock to anyone is going to be a big let down. But to go from Rock to Sami (I lost to Johnny Knoxville) is just too far a drop in my opinion. WWE has never seen Sami as anything more than a mid-carder.
Roman vs Sami is going to happen as a natural part of the Bloodline storyline. But based on WWE’s history that is a match on the Elimination Chamber PPV or a SmackDown main event match at best.
If it’s not The Rock at WrestleMania then WWE is obviously saying it’s Cody. They have not done as much promotion for a superstar returning from injury since the early 2000’s. They are hyping him up so much he is obviously in their eyes their secondary option.
Obviously, Rock/Roman at Mania is worth it, but where do you go after you beat The Rock? And does it really matter? I suppose you just keep the belt on Roman and try harder to build somebody worthy of ending his years-long reign.
Or does Rock beat Roman, in which case you either have to take the belt off Rocky at some point or have Roman lose a non-title match and then go back to being the unbeatable champ, which cheapens both the Rock/Roman match and Roman’s title reign coming out of it. Though maybe the majority of fans don’t care about that aspect as much as I do.
The problem with doing rock/Roman or Cody/Roman is the fans want Sami/Roman. We’ve seen this play out before when the story they were telling was leading to Batista winning the rumble to eventually face Orton. Fans turned on Batista because they wanted Bryan. Same thing the following year when Roman won the rumble, fans turned on him. If they force this on Cody, IMO the fans will turn on him. I think you have to go with Sami vs Roman at mania or else you are going to have a damaged babyface.
I think it’s more likely we have Cody Roman at Wrestlemania and Owens and Sami Vs the USOs.
I don’t think the masses expect Sami to win the rumble. He’s probably on peoples top 5 but I wonder whether he’d be peoples picks….let’s do a rumble pool to find out.