How WWE is Already Destroying the Universal Championship

Some people reading this may think it’s a little harsh, but I am saying those words for a genuinely good reason. The most recent episode of RAW saw a title change where Roman Reigns dropped the US Championship belt to Chris Jericho in a handicap match that also saw the inclusion of Kevin Owens; the current Universal Champion.

Now, although Jericho does deserve to have some gold around his waist as a reward for arguably his best heel run in the WWE in recent years, this also cements another turn of events that we can see unfolding as we head down the Road to Wrestlemania.

The Universal Championship has had a rough introduction into the world of pro wrestling when it was revealed at Summerslam 2016, with fans shouting ‘we want a new belt’ amongst other things that we shouldn’t mention here. The first ever champion, Finn Balor, put on an incredible display of wrestling against Seth Rollins before he was sidelined with a shoulder injury and vacated the title on RAW the following night. It was eventually up to Kevin Owens to hold the belt after Triple H screwed over Seth Rollins and, to be honest, he has done a pretty good job increasing the prestige of the belt. But then, it all goes downhill.

At Fastlane, Roman Reigns had a match for the Universal Championship belt against KO whilst he was still the US Champ. Thankfully, the WWE used their head and KO retained, but this has put Reigns firmly in the picture for the belt whilst Kevin Owens will drop down the mid-card, possibly leading to a feud with Jericho.

This raises a number of huge problems the WWE will have going into 2017.

The idea that the WWE are having right this second is to put a struggling belt onto a struggling wrestler in the hope to get them both over. Reigns was voted at the worst wrestler of 2016, something the man clearly doesn’t deserve no matter what you think about him (you have Tyler Breeze and Fandango wrestling in the same promotion!).

But if they go ahead and do this at the Royal Rumble, then Vince McMahon will not only almost certainly kill off the Big Dog’s career, it will also damage the prestige of the belt to such an extent it might never recover. Seth Rollins is still a viable option after his amazing run as WWE Champion, hell, even Jericho would be a more viable way to go because of the potentially explosive feud it could establish with Owens. Or you could just leave the belt on KO for now until they have built someone up enough to take it from him.

Knocking Owens down to the midcard to fight for the US belt is also a bad idea. You already have Sami Zayn being jobbed out to Braun Strowman and wallowing in the midcard, doing the same to Owens would feel like they are just smacking NXT and everything it stands for in the family jewels and expecting him to walk home.

Although Wrestlemania is so far shaping up to be an amazing event (on paper at least), the Road to Wrestlemania itself may be bumpy for the WWE and the wrestlers on their roster.