It’s been four-and-a-half months since WWE called Oba Femi up to the main roster. Through 14 matches, the former NXT Champion is 12-2, highlighted by a dominant win over Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 42.
Not a bad start.
But here’s the stat that really stands out: excluding the Royal Rumble match, where he officially debuted, entering at No. 1 and lasting nearly 40 minutes, every one of his matches since has been under 10 minutes.
According to Cagematch, Femi’s longest main-roster match was a first-round
King of the Ring Fatal 4-Way that fell just short of nine minutes. This past Monday on Raw, he disposed of Dominik Mysterio in under five minutes, a match prolonged by Dom’s stalling and cowardly antics, to advance in the tournament.
For someone billed as “The Ruler, the destroyer, the bringer of war,” WWE has done an excellent job of presenting him as such.
But these short squashes aren’t to protect or hide holes in Femi’s game. In NXT, he went beyond the 10-minute mark in several high-profile matches. Instead, WWE is providing truth in its advertising when he calls himself “the mountain that cannot be climbed.”
Moving on to the finals of the King of the Ring, he’ll either face an old foe, Je’Von Evans, or a future rival, Jey Uso. During Evans’ pursuit of Femi’s NXT Championship, “The Young O.G.” took Femi past the ten-minute mark in two meetings. Should they meet for the King’s crown at Night of Champions, their next encounter will likely also hit double digits.
But should he face Uso, it’ll be interesting to see how WWE books that match. In addition to becoming King, the tournament winner earns a world title match at SummerSlam. For Femi, presumably, that means facing Uso’s cousin Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship.
In recent weeks, Reigns has been fortifying the Bloodline, winding up both Jimmy and Jey Uso, as well as Jacob Fatu, and pointing them at his — or rather, their — critics. The OTC even sent Fatu to SmackDown to bring Solo Sikoa back into the fold, an invitation that Sikoa emphatically turned down.
If Femi can cut through “Main Event” Jey like he has everyone else, that should pressure Reigns to ramp up his efforts to reunite the family ahead of a potential match at SummerSlam, where the Head of the Table could be unseated in a sub-10-minute drubbing.
