Roman Reigns and Tama Tonga Give Us the Twitter Feud We Deserve

Last week, Roman Reigns and Tama Tonga had a brief spat on Twitter. It’s the sort of interaction across promotions that wrestling could use more of in the future.

Twitter jail, The Big Dog, and Drake lyrics. If you had “Bullet Club and The Shield feud via Roman Reigns and Tama Tonga” on your pro wrestling Bingo card, congratulations! Because that’s exactly what went down this past week.

For those who don’t pay attention to pro wrestlers on social media, first off good for you. It’s fun occasionally, but Wrestling Twitter™ is sometimes a cesspool. Other times, it’s a dumpster fire. See, for every wholesome tweet from Mick Foley donating merch sales to a worthy cause (while holding a koala), there’s a hundred sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, mean-spirited tweets from all corners of the globe.

But to the topic at hand, Tama Tonga ran afoul of Twitter’s guidelines and ended up with his account locked for a short period. It likely came from the tweets he posted in reply to fans commenting on a promo video (very NSFW audio) he posted dedicated to “internet f***ing nerds.” They were, well, they were awful.

When Tonga was released from Twitter jail, Roman Reigns decided to chime in. He said in a now-deleted tweet that Tonga’s rant came straight from a Drake album, which set off Tama again. Apparently, Tonga thinks Roman is the one who “snitched” on him to the Twitter cops:

Roman replied, taking credit for the increase in the video’s views:

But Tonga this far has had the final word. First, he went after the over-scripted nature of everything Reigns has ever said on camera:

And putting his money where his mouth is, Tonga followed up with a little homage to The Big Dog during his next ring entrance in the G1 (he would attempt a Superman punch during the match, too):

https://twitter.com/Tama_Tonga/status/1022896284884070400

It’s important to note that Reigns and Tonga are distant cousins, so it’s quite possible the two are just playing up on their relationship. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, this is the kind of thing that pro wrestling could use more of: making it feel “real.”

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The idea that WWE just outright ignores every other wrestling company in the world until convenient to mention them is absurd. It’s perfectly acceptable to promote yourself, and not your competition. But to pretend there is no alternative besides your company is ridiculous. Though this clearly wasn’t sanctioned by WWE, Roman Reigns took it upon himself to act like a normal human being.

Cross-promotion interaction has become a bit more commonplace over the past several months. The New Day turned a Twitter “spat” with The Elite into a full on video game tournament at E3. WWE has increased working relationships with several smaller promotions (for better or worse).

But while this spat between Reigns and Tonga isn’t likely to lead to a major WWE/NJPW cross-promotional supercard any time soon, it still helps ground the world of professional wrestling in reality. There is no bubble around any one company — everything exists in the same space at the same time. You’d have to expect some kind of crossover at some point.

Simply having a WWE superstar acknowledge a performer from another company — especially a WWE superstar as big as Roman Reigns — is a nice step forward. Could you imagine if, like, Steve Austin would have called out a guy like Scott Norton during the Monday Night Wars if Twitter existed back then? Or The Rock eviscerating El Dandy?

At very least, this is just something to entertain fans with no real consequences. But if it were to open the door to more overt interaction between companies, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.