After unifying WWE's world championships at WrestleMania 38, Roman Reigns has become a ghost, rarely defending his title or even wrestling. Reigns has been WWE management's clear choice to be the guy since the breakup of The Shield in 2014, and after years spent trying to force smiling good guy Reigns down the audience's throat, "The Big Dog" finally found his true calling in 2020. After a break during the early months of the Coronvirus pandemic, Reigns shocked many by returning as a heel, complete with the dastardly Paul Heyman at his side.
Now embracing his naturally cocky real-life personality, Reigns' heel run as "The Tribal Chief" has proven to be the best work of his career. So good has Reigns been that almost no one minded his year-plus reign as WWE universal champion. Reigns was cutting money promos and having good to great matches at big pay-per-views like Royal Rumble and SummerSlam, and when it came time to unify the universal and WWE world championships at WrestleMania 38, few doubted that Reigns would finally defeat Brock Lesnar on the Grandest Stage of Them All and emerge with all the gold.
Unfortunately, what should have been a triumphant reign as WWE's undisputed world champion quickly hit the skids, with Reigns suddenly working far less dates than usual, with no real explanation given onscreen. Reigns didn't defend his title at the WrestleMania Backlash pay-per-view, he didn't appear at all at Hell in a Cell, and is also not currently booked for Money in the Bank. Reigns also rarely even shows up on SmackDown or Raw anymore, much less wrestles on those programs. Reigns' current schedule echoes that of Lesnar himself, who since his return to WWE from UFC in 2012 has always been a part-time performer, even when holding a top title. Reigns suddenly doing the same is actually even worse, as he's criticized Lesnar for being an absent champion on many occasions, and was a constant TV presence during his pre-WrestleMania 38 universal title run.
While Reigns' next title defense was finally announced on Friday's episode of SmackDown - a clash with Matt Riddle on the June 17 edition of the show - it does little to alleviate the overall issue. For one, many WWE devotees doubt the match will actually take place as advertised, since Reigns hasn't appeared on TV in weeks and the setup for the match took place entirely without him. It would not at all be surprising to see the Reigns vs. Riddle title match prove to be some kind of bait and switch affair, a trick WWE boss Vince McMahon has sadly never been that shy about pulling on his audience.
Even if Reigns does defend against Riddle though, the last-minute nature of the match likely means Riddle has zero chance of winning it, leaving little reason for fans to be excited going in. With Reigns seemingly not likely to defend his title again until the end of July at SummerSlam, and not currently advertised for any other SmackDown shows between now and then, a possible match with Riddle would only be a brief respite from WWE's world championship drought of 2022. What makes this whole situation even more annoying is that it's highly doubtful WWE didn't know Reigns was soon to transition to a part-time schedule when they booked him to unify the world titles at WrestleMania 38. The logical thing to do when unifying the titles would be to put them on a fighting champion, not up on a mantle.