At Royal Rumble 2022 pay-per-view, Tribal Chief Roman Reigns defended his Universal Championship against Seth Rollins. That match was ended in disqualification after Reigns didn’t remove the Guillotine lock even Rollins touched the rope. Following the match, Reigns brutally attacked Rollins with steel chair.
However, many were not happy with the disqualification finish that saw Roman Reigns retain his title. On the recent edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed about why Vince McMahon changed the match to a disqualification finish.
“Essentially the original finish was that Roman Reigns was gonna beat Seth Rollins,” said Meltzer. ”The gist of the Rumble show was that Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar is the big match of the year and everything at the Rumble was to accentuate that as the big match of the year, so both had to look really, really strong.” (H/T – Wrestling Observer Radio)
That @WWERomanReigns chair assault at #RoyalRumble looked familiar… @WWERollins @HeymanHustle pic.twitter.com/1aymQSH1ww
— WWE (@WWE) January 31, 2022
Vince McMahon was keen for Roman Reigns to use the chair to create a mirror-like image of when Seth Rollins originally broke up The Shield.
“Vince changed the finish (…) to do all those chair shots at the end,” said Meltzer. ”Vince thought that was too much for Seth Rollins to destroy him like that, (…) Shane was really pushing for Rollins in the Rumble, (…) the feeling was it would be really stupid for him to take that terrible beating and go into the Rumble.” (H/T – Wrestling Observer Radio)
