Welcome to another engaging eWrestlingNews Thought Experiment!
Yesterday, WrestleVotes floated a rumor that WWE is tossing around the idea of introducing a Tribal Chief Championship, adding a new twist to the feud between Roman Reigns and Solo Sikoa. This is reminiscent of the way The Rock introduced the People’s Championship belt leading up to WrestleMania XL.
Our question for today is: “Do you find this a promising idea, or not? If yes, how would you bring it into the game, what design choices would you make and so on? If not, could you explain why?”
We eagerly await your thoughts and comments on this scenario below.
As for my personal take…
Without a doubt, this idea is fundamentally flawed and should not be pursued, for a multitude of reasons.
Even if they had every intention of implementing this, they would need to design and create it before January 6th. Displaying this title several weeks after the match between Roman and Solo would be meaningless because…
What becomes of the belt AFTER this? It’s only symbolic of a personal feud for the leadership of The Anoa’i Family. Roman and Solo shouldn’t (and it would make no sense if they did) defend it against fighters like LA Knight or Gunther. Even the Million Dollar Championship isn’t as personalized as this and could be passed along to others.
Additionally, isn’t the ula fala there to uniquely symbolize this? This prop item is used to denote leadership and power, much like a title belt would…
The WWE has spent so much time elevating this particular item as THE symbol. If they were to introduce a Tribal Chief Championship, the obvious design choice would just be a red title belt featuring the ula fala. And the only purpose would be to sell it as a personalized WWE merchandise on their shop.
This business-driven reasoning is fine. However, they didn’t sell replicas of the Peoples’ Championship title. So, why would they sell this? Also, wouldn’t selling replicas risk accusations of cultural appropriation when non-Samoans buy them?
As for the Peoples’ Championship, that was not the brightest idea, and was presumably just so The Rock could sport a belt on his shoulder. But the WWE has its own conundrum with the WWE Championship and Universal Championship not completely unified either. Even though Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes have been seen with only one title belt, Cody is still listed as the holder of both on WWE’s Superstars page.
Before introducing yet another title without a clear purpose, perhaps they should solve this existing problem first.
While discussions like these are important for WWE Creative to generate fresh ideas, it’s obvious that this particular idea doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
What’s your take on this? Share your opinions below!