Dutch Mantell reacts to Roman Reigns defeating Sami Zayn to retain Undisputed WWE Universal C’ship

Dutch Mantell, the retired American professional wrestler, opened up on Roman Reigns defeating Sami Zayn at the Elimination Chamber. He feels WWE made the right choice by having Sami Zayn lose in Montreal as WWE has made Roman as their top guy over the last three years and it would not have made much sense for Zayn to emerge on top of him.

Speaking in the latest edition of Sportskeeda’s Wrestling Smack Talk, Mantell took a dig at at Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez as the two wrestling analysts felt that Zayn should have gone past Roman in Montreal.

In this regard, Mantell said, “Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez had this big long a** discussion about Sami should’ve won in Montreal, I don’t get it. So I come up with the line, tell me you’re a mark without telling me you’re a mark. So they’re out there saying, ‘It would’ve been a great moment in WWE’, granted. They said, ‘Oh yeah, but he can beat him down the road but it wouldn’t be like Montreal’, no it wouldn’t it be.”

He further opined, “But I think they worked on this, on Roman, for three years, for him to go up against Sami, who is the weakest one of all of them and lose, that wouldn’t even fare good for anybody. I don’t think it would even help Sami because Sami needs Roman, he needs The Bloodline because that’s what got him over. Without them, I don’t know where he would be. He would probably still be the third or fourth match but he fit in this perfectly because he wanted to be with them so bad. Finally got it and we knew it would end up this way but the way they went into it, brilliant.”

The 73-year-old Mantell mentioned that WWE’s decision to put Roman on top was the right call and termed Elimination Chamber as “brilliant”.

Mantell added, “So, don’t give it away on the first night. The old saying in wrestling is, ‘They will come to see the good guy win’ but if he [Sami Zayn] had won, he goes up against Roman, they will not come to see the bad guy win. They just won’t do that. I mean, later on, the mood could change on it but I think, what they did on Elimination Chamber was brilliant and they know what they’re doing and they would have to almost revamp everything and they’re not going to do that.”

Zayn gave a tough fight to Roman but lost eventually. He received a standing ovation in front of his home crowd. After the match, the 38-year-old reacted saying, “I don’t know, man. Now is a weird time to catch me. At the moment, I’m a little numb to strange. And I can’t really put my finger on why that is because they [the fans] were definitely rocking and rolling every second of the way. Maybe it’s at the very end, I don’t know. I could see their faces. And I don’t know if that’s just me being biased, but I just looked at some faces and it was a different kind of like, ‘oh, man’ [disappointed].’

Former WWE manager Jim Cornette, on the other hand, also joined the bandwagon and commented on the Roman Reigns vs Sami Zayn clash. On a recent episode of Jim Cornette’s Drive Thru, he pointed out the reason behind Roman’s win and said, ” They either want somebody like Reigns that looks physically impressive and cool, how he dresses, acts, and carries himself. Or they want a guy like Cody with the suit and the tights and the Bloodline of the Rhodes family,” Cornette said. “Here’s a WWE Superstar Sami Zayn but it’s not the WWE Champion. For that, they want somebody that has all of the attributes including appearance.”