September 23rd, 2024: Jey Uso wins the Intercontinental Championship to one of the loudest crowd reactions of the decade. And it wasn’t just fans inside the arena, across the world people were equally as thrilled.
February 2nd, 2025: Jey Uso pushes John Cena out of the ring and wins the Royal Rumble. The most shocking Royal Rumble winner of all time. People were pleasantly surprised.
April 19th, 2025: Jey Uso makes Gunther submit and wins the World Heavyweight Championship. It’s the opening match of the show. People cheer, but it’s not to the same level it was a few months ago. There’s a general feeling of apathy.
Somewhere along the road to WrestleMania, something changed, and the idea of Jey Uso as World Champion became less appealing. After winning the Championship, the problem only compounded. In arenas, Jey still got some of the loudest crowd reactions, but general fan sentiment – especially online – shifted. Towards the end of 2025, Jey wrestled CM Punk for the vacant World Heavyweight Championship. A few slip-ups and miscommunications during the contest seemed to cement this growing dislike. And, by 2026 Jey was moved down the card back into the tag team division. His main event singles run was over for now.
However, only five years earlier in 2020, the idea of Jey Uso winning the Royal Rumble and winning the World Heavyweight Championship was impossible. It cannot be stressed enough how unlikely this all seemed not that long ago. At that time, most people still couldn’t tell Jey apart from his twin brother and tag team partner, Jimmy Uso.
How Jey Uso Became a Star
They had been wrestling as “The Usos” in WWE for the last decade, becoming one of the most popular and reliable tag teams. But at the beginning of the pandemic, Jimmy Uso suffered an injury. Sometimes, when one member of a tag team is hurt, the other member still gets used in a singles role. This didn’t really happen with Jey. That’s because Jey and Jimmy were so closely linked in the minds of not just the fans but the creative team as well, so that without one the other was useless. Their whole tag team persona for the last decade was that they are one in the same, they’ve been together since day one of their lives. The fans didn’t know their individual personalities, and commentators still got them confused with each other.
But Roman Reigns was taking more creative control behind the scenes and had an idea to build a faction with his relatives, “The Bloodline”. With Jimmy injured, Roman started the group with just Jey. How they got there though was what changed Jey’s career forever. Instead of just aligning with each other without much explanation beyond their blood relation, they first feuded with each other over Roman’s Universal Championship.
Jey became number 1 contender in a fairly shocking moment. Roman was happy to be facing his cousin but clearly didn’t see him as a serious threat. Roman knew that he was the main event star of the family, the face of the company, and Jey was just one half of a great tag team. Then Jey gave an incredibly emotional promo simply asking one question: “Why can’t it be me?”
Through gritted teeth, holding back tears, Jey poured decades of internalised identity and confidence struggles into a few concise words. He compared what people say when they see Roman to what they say when they see him. People see Roman as the main event poster boy, but when they see Jey all they say is “Which one are you?”
Following this, the two wrestled twice, with Roman winning both times. Jey eventually joined The Bloodline and so did Jimmy once he was healthy. There was a flash of potential with Jey in 2020, but he went back into a tag team for the next few years. Despite this, he still showed a lot of his unique individual character through various talking segments, specifically those with “The Honorary Uce” Sami Zayn. During Sami’s comical interactions with the self-serious Bloodline, it was common to see Jey breaking character to laugh. Moments like these helped fans grow attached to Jey for his personality. It was becoming much clearer which of the two brothers was Jey.
The First Warning Shots
Once Jey eventually broke from The Bloodline, standing up against the manipulative patriarch in Reigns, he got a shot at the World Title at SummerSlam 2023. The handling of his split from the faction, along with the in-ring of his match with Roman, is where we see the first hiccups. For years, Jey’s split and singles run had been anticipated. It was a guaranteed all-time great moment. And, the way it was executed is still great but felt a little bit muted, like it had more potential. This is because the initial betrayal pop had already been used at Night of Champions 2023 when Jimmy stood up for Jey and superkicked Roman himself. It seemed like with all the focus on Jey, WWE wanted to give Jimmy a big moment too, so they let him be the first of the brothers to stand up to Roman and put hands on him. Jey’s moment instead came later, on SmackDown. Instead of feeling like a huge shock, it was expected.
Regardless, the moment still delivered. What didn’t, was the match at SummerSlam. It was the logical next step for Jey to challenge Roman for the title once again. But no one truly believed that Jey would win. He had already pinned Roman at Money In The Bank. It felt unlikely that he would do it again and end Roman’s 1000-day reign. We were all just waiting for Roman’s WrestleMania rematch with Cody Rhodes. However, if the in-ring action is good enough, wrestlers can convince you of any outcome, no matter how unlikely it feels. And Jey and Roman’s SummerSlam clash was a long and slow match that failed to ever make the audience believe the impossible would happen. That’s before Jimmy returned at the end to cost Jey the match in a predictable betrayal that the follow-up failed to fully make sense of.
This betrayal didn’t feel like the organic next step in the story, instead feeling forced so that WWE could reach its destination of a Jey vs Jimmy WrestleMania 40 match, while freeing Jey up to go on a singles run. Despite this, on his own Jey thrived. Specifically, in the Fastlane post-show press conference where Jey struggled to contain himself again. He and Cody Rhodes were obviously drunk and had some funny banter during the press conference. This allowed Jey to show his natural personality which includes saying “yeet” a lot.
Once we arrived at the Jey vs Jimmy match, it was another case of a bad match when the lights are brightest. But these poor performances in marquee matches didn’t slow Jey’s momentum or popularity at all. Of course, online there were memes and concerns, but his stock only rose. There were also myriad good performances in exciting, tense matches littered between these bad ones. For example, one month later at Backlash 2024, Jey’s match against World Heavyweight Champion Damian Priest was exciting and had a molten crowd.
Similarly, so did his Intercontinental Championship win later in the year. Fans were elated to see Jey win his first championship on his own, even if it wasn’t the biggest title he could win. Losing it back to Breakker shortly after kept Jey feeling hot and like an underdog. Practically, it was a decision made to free Jey up to face World Heavyweight Champion Gunther who lacked hot babyface challengers. Their match at Saturday Night’s Main Event was good and actually made fans believe that Jey might win. When he lost though, it felt like his last chance. He had had numerous World Title matches in the last year and lost in all of them. So, when he won the Royal Rumble a few weeks later to earn another World Title match against Gunther, everyone was shocked.
Jey Uso was the Wrong Winner of the Royal Rumble
Since Jey had been getting frequent title shots over the past year, the Rumble win didn’t feel like a Rumble win, it felt like a championship win. The opponent was the same, but the destination was different: WrestleMania, where the underdog wins. With Jey now as the Rumble winner, it was guaranteed that he – the underdog – would win against Gunther. Otherwise, WWE wouldn’t have wasted the Rumble win on the same outcome that happened a few weeks earlier.
Even Jey knew it too. His promo on the RAW after Royal Rumble was great and very emotional. Jey was genuine and real with the audience. Opening up about confidence issues he had that were highlighted when he started his singles run. This is why people grew to love Jey. He wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn’t often feel like he’s playing a part. That vulnerability allows audiences to relate and connect with him. But it felt more like the promo someone cuts after winning a World Championship, not winning the right to challenge for one.
WWE then had 8 weeks of build-up for the Jey and Gunther rematch, and they failed to explore the dynamic between these two characters any deeper. With a predictable outcome and a stale filler arc, Jey’s in-ring mistakes were spotlighted. They were used as the scapegoat for why this feud wasn’t exciting. But there have been plenty of matches and wrestlers with occasional botches that are well-received. But in those cases, the stories overall and in-ring are strong enough that people overlook them or sometimes feel as though they add to the match. What really was the fault here, is that the story was not developed or deep enough and the setup was mistimed, sucking out all the tension.
The Main Problem with Recent WWE Storylines
This speaks to a larger issue within WWE post WrestleMania 40 and TKO acquisition. Well set-up, layered, long-term, focused storylines up and down the roster which were seen in 2022, 2023, and parts of 2024, have largely been forgotten. Instead, it feels as though WWE is playing catch-up. The sheer brutality and amount of content is too much for the creative team to decide on clear long-term directions, let alone intriguing weekly television. To make time, WWE rely on their stars treading water with the same scripts and catchphrases to engage the weekly crowds.
For example, Jey Uso in 2025 no longer cut emotional promos building on his identity and confidence struggles, or developing new internal hurdles, instead he spent most of his screen time “yeeting” with the crowd. Which, while fun in-person, as a weekly viewer gets old quite quick. Especially when they added the “run it back” encore section that extended his entrance even longer. This gimmick became the entirety of Jey’s character and a permanent bullet point in WWE’s scripts at the time. It was something they could rely on to engage the crowd every week, so they didn’t have to think of anything too time-consuming like a deep and layered emotional story.
Among the shifting sentiment and negativity, an organic story grew right in front of their noses that wasn’t capitalised on. And it was one that would’ve turned the negative of Jey’s declining performances into a positive.
The Pressure of the Spotlight was too much for Jey Uso
In some shaky backstage footage, right after Jey Uso had won the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 41, Jey can be seen knelt down in a corner, facing the wall. It’s not clear what the feeling is in this moment, but it almost seems like the weight of this new responsibility is heavy on him. In other quasi-behind-the-scenes footage, Jey mentions some nerves and insecurity over whether he can handle the main event responsibility. That seems to his main storyline in WWE Unreal, blaming his botches on nerves. The season concludes with Jey’s championship victory, suggesting that he’s overcome those nerves and succeeded.
But it’s never that easy. Jey’s promos, one of his strong suits, became less coherent and insightful. You can often see him overthinking what to say. He’s also usually out of breath which many blame on his intensely physical entrance through the crowd but could also be due to those nerves. In particular, there’s one promo with Jey and CM Punk building up to their SNME World Title match. Punk is well-known at digging deeper into characters that he interacts with. During this promo, it feels like he sets Jey up with various story threads to catch. Yet all of them fall to the ground. Jey, struggling to think of anything to say, falls back on his reliable catchphrases, something perhaps the creative team indirectly taught him. Therefore, the storyline between he and Punk is unmemorable and impersonal – just another match among thousands.
Instead of incorporating these real, visible, and relatable struggles into Jey’s character and storylines, giving him a fresh and organic direction, his character was regressed and flattened. This has caused him to become less interesting, and the audience to be less invested in him. At first, Jey being away from the main event scene felt refreshing for his character and showed potential for development, but with the reformation of The Bloodline, it’s only regressed all of Jey’s development back to being Roman’s mistreated lackey. Instead, this time, the mistreatment isn’t acknowledged by the writing.
Now we’re at a place much more comfortable and familiar for everyone involved. When they all had so much potential and the future was exciting. But this time it’s not the same. The audience needs growth and development – it’s an unknown and scary place for characters to go but the courage to explore is rewarded with investment. Unfortunately, it seems as though his character – much like most of WWE’s current roster – will be in a developmental holding pattern for the foreseeable future, and a return to the main event is unlikely.