{"id":100230,"date":"2021-09-10T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=100230"},"modified":"2021-09-10T12:00:29","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T16:00:29","slug":"reigns-vs-balor-announced-for-extreme-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/09\/10\/reigns-vs-balor-announced-for-extreme-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Roman Reigns vs Finn Balor Announced For Extreme Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Its official: <em>World Wrestling Entertainment<\/em> has announced that <strong>Roman Reigns<\/strong> will put his title, and his 365+ day reign. And it will be Reigns vs. the inaugural Universal Champion, <strong>Finn Balor. <\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>The Finn Balor vs Roman Reigns will go down on September 26 at the <em>Extreme Rules<\/em> event at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.<\/h2>\n<p>Or, will they? I may not be the \u201cPrince\u201d persona, a casually dressed smooth operator who used the psychological art of war to split up <strong>The Undisputed Era. <\/strong>The latest installment of <em>Friday Night SmackDown <\/em>seemed to tease a return to the \u201cDemon King\u201d gimmick Balor has used in the past. As Reigns left the ring after besting Balor, the lights dimmed and turned red. As if the demon was awakening.<\/p>\n<p>Known as <strong>Prince Devitt <\/strong>during his <strong>NJPW <\/strong>days, Balor chose a symbolic new ring name when he joined WWE. \u2018Finn\u2019 is a hero and king of Irish legend, whilst Balor is the giant that he slew. Both regal and demonic connotations are purposefully knitted into the name.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qbF-3OyZT1c\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Time will tell if Balor chooses to don the elaborate painting and headdress again. Before he can possibly become once and future champion, the current titleholder Reigns has to come face to face with another challenger.\u00a0 Brock Lesnar will take on the champ at Madison Square Garden on September 10\u2019s episode. Reigns has seemed shook by the advent of Lesnar. And cracks are beginning to show in his relationship with \u201cspecial counsel\u201d Paul Heyman, who is also \u201cadvocate\u201d to Lesnar.<\/p>\n<p>A less invincible Roman Reigns than the WWE Universe has come to know will be picking up the mic and looking Lesnar in the eye in a venue steeped in history.<\/p>\n<h2>The Universal Championship continues to be perhaps WWE\u2019s last truly meaningful title. The race for it has some of the roster\u2019s heaviest hitters in contention.<\/h2>\n<p>Lesnar returned with his eyes clearly on it as his prize, and Balor returned from NXT with the same goal. It&#8217;s a Mulligan of his 2016 reign which was cut short by a shoulder injury. Then, there is <strong>Seth Rollins, <\/strong>hell bent on another Universal title run. Not to mention <strong>Edge, <\/strong>who wants to hold the title one last time as the sun sets for good on his legendary WWE career.<\/p>\n<p>Each of these contenders has just as much chance as the other of taking the title from Reigns. But, of course&#8230; he won\u2019t go quietly. Balor vs. Reigns may not be the end of Reign&#8217;s title run, but it will certainly be a test. His long championship run and the revamp of his character into an indomitable heel have helped to enshrine the belt with the honor it deserves. It&#8217;s become the crown jewel of one of WWE\u2019s best current storylines.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">(cover photo courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wwe.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>More from LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Its official: World Wrestling Entertainment has announced that Roman Reigns will put his title, and his 365+ day reign. And it will be the against inaugural Universal Champion, Finn Balor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3715,"featured_media":100233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,4],"tags":[57,328,111,256,77,76,74],"class_list":["post-100230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smackdown","category-wwe","tag-brock-lesnar","tag-edge","tag-finn-balor","tag-paul-heyman","tag-roman-reigns","tag-seth-rollins","tag-wwe-universal-champion"],"modified_by":"Ryan Boman","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}