Roman Reigns Just Did More for Jacob Fatu Than WWE Creative Ever Could

Roman Reigns is WWE's kingmaker. 

Not Triple H. Not the creative team. Not even TKO. It's Reigns. 

Look no further than Saturday night's Backlash. In the main event, The Tribal Chief "retained" the World Heavyweight Championship over Jacob Fatu in a dusty finish. 

In a sub-20-minute match, Reigns did more for Fatu's long-term status than anyone else even remotely involved with the promotion ever could. 

The post-WrestleMania promo exchanges and violence leading up to Saturday were great. But Reigns got in the ring and let Fatu violently do his thing in front of a massive audience, pulling off great near-falls before the chaos. 

Said chaos included Fatu snapping, attacking a referee and plenty of other officials, before really inflicting harm on Reigns. 

In the aftermath? Reigns took it a step further perfectly, straight-up saying Fatu doesn't belong in WWE outright. 

As if. 

It's a beautiful swerve, really. One didn't have to look far to find fans upset with Reigns' title win at 'Mania over CM Punk. There were allegations that WWE was just running the Bloodline back again. Doing cheating finishes all the time. The same old promos. Part-timer status. And on and on. 

Saturday night was a nice rebuttal to all that.

This feud is clearly going to continue. There wasn't an interference in sight. In fact, there was Reigns trying to cheat a bit and bend the rules to get a win, but he's doing it against a family member who won't be gaslit and won't just take it and move on to something else. 

Which is the point. This is all in service to making Fatu look like a million bucks. His in-ring work and aura do that on their own. But eating a bunch of spears, "losing" and popping right back up and walking out while Reigns, the champion, is still down and gassed? 

That's some main event-player stuff. 

There aren't many who can do this for other Superstars. Take a look around. Largely everything around Cody Rhodes has been marred by weird stuff: Travis Scott, random trips to the tag division, Jelly Roll, and an unexplainable Randy Orton heel turn.

Bron Breakker has turned into a weird community-developmental type, where fans cheer for his improvement into the top guy he should be. Gunther retired John Cena and looks lost. Half the 'Mania matches were either too short or felt like encounters on a weekly episode of Raw, if not both.

The only exception is Oba Femi, but he's looking like a generational anomaly at this point and was on this path regardless. Poetically, Brock Lesnar appeared to see this and apparently called it a career to give him that bump. Lesnar is the only guy on the same level as Reigns when it comes to this.

Love him or hate him, Jey Uso's blossoming into the main event for a while was proof of this concept with Reigns. When he's not slugging it out with top guys like Rhodes for the biggest programs of the year, he's uniquely able to build up others. 

It's a different approach than we're used to from top guys, too. Back in the day, John Cena would shred younger guys on the mic (remember Austin Theory? Woof), and it wouldn't really build them up.

Reigns has the willingness and ability to take a different track. And he undoubtedly heard the criticisms and understood the expectations that came with him winning it all again and headlining the company. 

Here's the kicker, really: Reigns and WWE could have easily just run the Bloodline back. The same old finishes back. They're too big to fail, alone at the top of the mountain and in control of all the revisionist history. 

But they didn't. And aren't. 

In a very real, meta sort of way, in this blurred lines era, Reigns could easily use this title run to catapult multiple Superstars into the main event sphere for the heck of it before he drops the belt and fades into the background again. At 'Mania, he was already teasing a match with Femi...remember?

And if that's what he ends up doing while exceeding expectations, even the fans most tired of him won't have much of a choice but to acknowledge Reigns.