Je’Von Evans says Roman Reigns carried WWE out of the worst stretch of business it has had in the modern era, which puts the youngest wrestler in the argument on the opposite side to most of the people who have been having it.
Evans was speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight.
“It’s kind of crazy but like there was a time in wrestling where especially like in WWE, where we were just losing a lot of views, especially during that COVID era and stuff like that; we were losing a lot of money. Then Roman, bro, he came back into the game, and he carried WWE….He changed the game. He changed the swagger of WWE. He changed everything. I feel like, no matter what, he can take a break, come back and still get that big reaction. It’s insane.”
WWE ran television without an audience for months in 2020, moved to the ThunderDome for the back half of that year, and had no touring revenue at all. Reigns returned at SummerSlam that August after sitting out the early months of the pandemic, turned heel, took Paul Heyman as his advocate and began a Universal Championship reign that ran until WrestleMania 40 in April 2024. It lasted 1,316 days, the longest world title reign in WWE in nearly forty years, and it ran alongside the company’s recovery from the emptiest arenas in its history into the television rights deals and the TKO merger that followed.
Whether Reigns deserves the credit for that is precisely the thing being argued about at the moment, and Evans has walked into the middle of it.
Conrad Thompson said on 83 Weeks that he considers Reigns the most overrated main eventer in WWE history, and Eric Bischoff agreed with him. Jim Ross would not. JBL spent two weeks arguing the other side on Something To Wrestle, first directly with Thompson and then with a story about a fan in Dallas who hated Tim Brooks enough to pay double to see him lose, his point being that a reaction is a reaction.
JBL was also part of it, saying the top man gets more credit than he is owed because there is a loaded roster underneath him, in the same way he gets more blame than he deserves when business is poor. Thompson’s fuller version of the case is less about Reigns than about Heyman.
What Evans adds is the only perspective none of them can offer. He is 21, he came up through NXT during the run in question, and he joined the main roster this January into a company that had already been rebuilt.
Reigns has taken repeated extended absences since dropping the title and has returned to a reaction each time, including at SummerSlam, where he retained the World Heavyweight Championship against Seth Rollins on night two.
That position is currently less settled than it has been in a while. On Monday’s Raw in Buffalo, Solo Sikoa turned on Reigns and rejected the Bloodline, hitting him with a Samoan Spike alongside LA Knight while Jacob Fatu watched and did nothing. Reigns is booked to defend the World Heavyweight Championship on Raw from Arena CDMX in Mexico City on September 14 against the winner of the luchador tournament, and is advertised for Money in the Bank in October and Survivor Series in November.
Evans has his own story running. He was attacked by Big Cass on the August 3 Raw in Des Moines, has been targeted repeatedly since, and beat JD McDonagh on Monday before calling Cass out. This is Cass’ first program in WWE since returning.
