What If Jey Uso Beat Roman Reigns At WWE SummerSlam 2023?

This Saturday on WWE SummerSlam 2025 Night 1, Roman Reigns teams up along with his cousin Jey Uso, something that just two years ago would have been seen as a shocking occurrence. That is because two years ago, Jey was difficult Roman for the Undisputed WWE Championship, which he only lost due to a, let’s consider, questionable selection from Jey’s brother Jimmy. With Jey and Roman teaming up over again, it is time to ask the query: What if Jimmy had stayed backstage, and Jey had won the title as a substitute?

I feel at this point we will safely say it isn’t an insane idea. WrestleMania 41 has come and gone — we have seen Jey Uso win a world championship and serve well within the role. The weird thing, though, is it didn’t really seem to be an insane idea on the time, either. Jey had just gotten a pinfall victory over Reigns at Money within the Bank, becoming the primary man to pin the champion in three years. Greater than that, Reigns had slowly been losing the support of the Bloodline, the family group that had been propping up his reign almost your entire time; Jey himself was a former member, his brother Jimmy Uso was also out, as was “Honorary Uce” Sami Zayn, and the Usos had been working on the ultimate member, Solo Sikoa, within the lead-up to SummerSlam. Reigns had finally lost the protective shield of his family. And even beyond that — it just seemed right. Roman’s title reign had been about Jey almost from the start; your entire Bloodline story was in regards to the two of them. To some, Jey winning seemed less improbable and more inevitable.

In fact, that is not what happened, and ultimately, possibly that is okay. Jey still got to pin Roman, he still got to be world champion eventually, and the final fanbase seems nice with Roman’s reign of terror ending by the hands of Cody Rhodes. But could we now have kept all that, and still gotten the artistic achievement the Bloodline story would have been if Jey had won the world title at SummerSlam 2023?

I’m mostly curious about artistic arguments here, so I’m not likely going to discuss gate or rankings or every other business metric. That said, for example Jey beat Roman and won the title. Say as a substitute of interfering on Roman’s behalf, Jimmy interferes on Jey’s behalf, and Solo activates Roman, too — Roman’s family has at all times been the difference-maker, in spite of everything. Now what do we now have? I feel we now have Undisputed WWE Champion Jey Uso leading a brand new babyface version of The Bloodline. Or, as I prefer to call it, a license to print money.

I feel plenty of things that happened to Jey in late 2023 could truthfully still be incorporated after his title win. Drew McIntyre, for instance, could still be his first great nemesis — those matches would just be title matches. Crucially, I’d also keep Jey’s friendship with Cody and their short-lived tag title reign, including the pathos of them defeating Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens for the titles. If the story maintained its themes, Jey would stay a babyface through all this, however the pressures of being champion would begin to wear him down, and he might start making decisions that worry Jimmy and Solo, perhaps by reminding them of Roman. Jey’s title reign would not must be long, but ideally it might have lasted long enough for the cracks in his composure to start to point out.

Don’t be concerned, Cody Rhodes fans, this timeline still likely leads to your boy ending his story at WrestleMania 40. On this version of events, nonetheless, as a substitute of rehashing the one thing he and Roman Reigns have in common yet again (their relationship with Dusty, which is largely all anyone desires to refer to Cody about) Cody has to honor his father’s legacy by defeating his friend, Jey Uso — a person who’s rapidly crumbling under the burden of the title. There is a ton of potential for poignance here, particularly if Cody (as he often does) desires to frame things when it comes to wrestling families and/or dynasties. The concept may very well be that the Rhodes family is able to tackle the burden of the throne, which has weighed heavy on the top of the Anoa’is for years now.

That is all just speculation on what such a feud might appear to be, after all. The necessary thing is, regardless of what the scenario, Cody is getting crowned in Philadelphia. The really necessary thing is, on this version of events, we do not get the Jimmy vs. Jey WrestleMania match.

Roman stayed gone from WrestleMania until SummerSlam after losing the title to Cody, and if Jey had won the title, there would have been no issues with him doing something similar from SummerSlam until WrestleMania. Be advised there is no such thing as a have to mourn for the rest of Roman’s title reign following SummerSlam 2023; one in all the explanations I imagine Jey winning is the superior timeline is that it avoids the last two successful title defenses of Roman’s reign — the LA Knight match at Crown Jewel and the Royal Rumble four-way, neither of which were anything to jot down home about. As an alternative, Roman could have stayed home and nursed his aura back to health, returning just in time for … hey have a look at that, it is the match he was at all times speculated to have at WrestleMania!

I do know most individuals loved “Final Boss” Dwayne Johnson, and possibly a few of that may very well be incorporated if the fans began booing Johnson over Roman, but how much messy drama would WWE have avoided by simply removing Reigns from the WrestleMania 40 title picture and booking him in a non-title match with The Rock? That is the match they wanted anyway. And after that, there are any variety of directions to go along with Roman, with Jey’s babyface Bloodline, and with recent members of the family like Jacob Fatu and the Guerrillas of Destiny presumably still coming in.

It is not necessarily that Jey winning at SummerSlam 2023 makes the present state of WWE so significantly better, however it does make the last two years feel more intentional. And on this case, it at all times felt like there was more at stake than that. Stories live or die on their endings; without a terrific ending, your great starting and middle won’t bear the fruit of their potential, whereas a terrific ending can turn a mediocre story right into a masterpiece. AEW’s Death Riders storyline, for instance, won’t be remembered for the multiple speed bumps it hit along the road to All In — it’ll be remembered for “Hangman” Adam Page winning the AEW World Championship. In contrast, the Bloodline story could have (and arguably must have) been remembered as the best WWE storyline of all time — and if Jey had won at SummerSlam 2023, it may need been.