As RAW went on Monday night, many WWE fans had two prevailing thoughts in regards to Roman Reigns. He, along with Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, and Big Cass, participated in the previous week’s main event to determine a new WWE Universal Champion. Owens, of course, came out on top, with an assist from a returning Triple H, who pedigreed both Reigns and Rollins long after Cass had been eliminated.

Owens was introduced by Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley to kick off the in-ring portion of this week’s show, only to be interrupted by Rollins. The two were eventually booked in a title match for Clash of Champions and forced into singles competition on RAW as well. Big Cass seemingly forgot about his big match last Monday and was booked back with Enzo in a tag team match against The Shining Stars, making not a single mention of his big opportunity. But Roman Reigns was nowhere to be found. Until the end.

After Owens successfully defeated Sami Zayn in the final match of the evening, Reigns came out to rightfully showcase his frustrations for being screwed out of a championship victory. Not lost in all of this was the puzzling absence of Triple H, who returned to WWE programming after a near five-month absence, only to disappear again without offering any explanation. But Roman was staking his claim to Kevin Owens’ title as well.

Of course, Mick Foley emerged to announce an Owens-Reigns match for next week, where if Roman proves victorious, he’ll be added to the Clash of Champions main event on September 25, making it a triple threat along with Rollins. However, Cageside Seats says not to expect that result.

We initially reported last week that the original plan was for Roman Reigns to continue his feud with Rusev over the United States Championship, which would culminate in a match at Clash of Champions . The two never actually wrestled in a sanctioned match at SummerSlam , intentionally delaying the angle for another month, but the expectation was that it wouldn’t last much longer than that.

Finn Balor’s devastating injury forced the creative team to re-think their entire plans for the flagship show’s main event picture. Both Reigns and Rollins were originally going to be kept out of the title hunt altogether while Balor’s reign accumulated days and traction. Reigns is technically still under some measure of house arrest after violating the WWE Wellness Policy, hence the program with Rusev that began leading into the company’s second-biggest show of the year. When you consider Reigns was supposed to face either John Cena or Seth Rollins for either the WWE World or Universal Championships, the violation was obviously costly.

However, Rusev recently indicated that his honeymoon (he and Lana celebrated a second wedding in Bulgaria last week) would last 23 days, which puts any idea of a match with Roman Reigns at Clash of Champions in jeopardy. It appears as if Reigns will lose to Owens next week, likely due to some level of interference from Chris Jericho. As we saw this week, Reigns speared Jericho to close the show.

The plan is for that spear to lay the groundwork for a Reigns-Jericho program, and that match will be added to Clash of Champions . And then once Rusev returns from his tropical hiatus, he and Reigns will pick up where they left off at SummerSlam . Vince’s hope is that Reigns can build himself back up to the main eventer they were pushing him as, but there have also been internal discussions about turning him heel, as well.

Those discussions also included Seth Rollins in what would have been a double turn. However, it seems as if they’ll do things separately, though Rollins is clearly on his way to turning if he isn’t already there. But as far as Roman Reigns is concerned, we should be expecting feuds with Chris Jericho and Rusev before he re-enters the main event scene again.

[Image via WWE]