Coulda Been Betta: Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns

Let me get this straight. It's the go-home RAW after a trio of lackluster shows, the one in the middle being arguably the worst three-hour broadcast in your history. What you do on that show is give us a 20 minute match to open that's better placed in 2000 (and was placed in 2000), provide us with Naomi/Cameron, advertise that people come back during halftime of Monday Night Football for the one segment that matters, and finish with Mark Henry and Rusev...though that ended up being entertaining. Oh, and you also did this...

Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins have plenty of history. Geno and Sean and I and all of you shed tears when Seth turned his back on his brothers. Rollins and Ambrose had a great feud that isn't over yet, but Roman Reigns had stayed away until Dean went away to complete his acting work. Reigns and Rollins are booked on Sunday at Night of Champions in my backyard in Nashville in a match that makes sense. This is the one Shield feud currently possible that hasn't happened in the ring yet. It was important for that simple point alone.

Yet on Monday, you tease Reigns and Rollins in a singles match and then, rather than it never starting, being a set-up on Reigns or a spot for a two-minute schmoz, you instead give us (pause of incredulity) Reigns and Rollins in a wrestling match with a decent finishing sequence and a clean pin for Roman Reigns on Seth Rollins.

So allow me to ask the question to all of you. Why on earth would you do something like this? What's the advantage of putting Reigns over, other than making it more obvious that Seth will have Kane out there to try and make Roman pay on Sunday. I highly expect that to happen, then Ambrose to run out, and we have a made-for-TV tag team bout for next Monday's RAW. But again, why, even if you book that match, do you let it play out for that long and certainly why the hell would you let Reigns just pin Rollins clean? What's the point of Sunday?

I've written many times about the extreme necessity for novelty in professional wrestling. Here you had a match people want to see, even if the build hasn't been great over the past few weeks, and you destroyed the novelty and the historic nature of it by giving it away for free. Somewhere, Eric Bischoff is wondering why they stole one of his former company's worst creative concepts.

There's just no reason to do it. There's no reason to give that away. Book Seth in a dominant fashion over someone and have him mock Roman Reigns in the process. Have Reigns go over a decent-level heel, for example Del Rio would have been perfect if he were still there, and just do a stare down after or have Rollins attack him with the briefcase or even just talk on the big screen and have Reigns react in the ring.

WWE could have literally done ANYTHING other than actually destroy the purpose for watching that solid midcard match on Sunday. It's clear all we're supposed to care about is Cena/Lesnar, and that angle was spectacular last night. Monday ensured that's the case, so if that was the point, mission accomplished.

I just found that decision incredibly dumb. Maybe I'm wrong.

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This week's guest is huge: WWE superstar Roman Reigns joins the show live from their Nashville studio for a wide open discussion of his development, the Shield, and his rise to the top. We'll have the highlights here on the site Sunday.)