For over a month, the hottest angle on WWE Raw has been the upstart new faction billed as The 946 going after The Bloodline. The group has seen Royce Keys take on a more violent edge than he demonstrated in his first half-year on the main roster, teamed with NXT callups OTM for a series of vicious beatdowns against Bloodline members, though they also haven’t hesitated to perpetrate violence against other upper card acts that get in their way either.
With Jaida Parker becoming the newest member revealed for the faction, the 946 vs. Bloodline feud looks primed to reach new heights in the tail end of 2026. There’s a lot left to be seen about this group, including how they’ll perform bell-to-bell when OTM and Parker in particular get their proper main roster debuts. Nonetheless, this program has been one of the best elements of WWE programming as late summer turns to fall, and WWE may have found just the right casting to tell the story at hand.
The 946 Present Fresh Matchups For Roman Reigns And The Usos
The Bloodline is one of the best established brands in modern wrestling: a dominant faction rooted in WWE’s biggest singles star of the last decade in Roman Reigns and its biggest name tag team in The Usos.
One of the challenges of booking around stars like them, however, is that they’ve been performing in the spotlight so long it’s hard to make them feel fresh against fellow big names. Indeed, running back LA Knight as The Tribal Chief’s top challenger going into Money in the Bank is notably the second time WWE has executed a version of this program for a world title with Reigns on top and Knight as the number one contender. Critics would suggest that this story feels like a retread, especially when the same outcome of The OTC retaining looks probable.
The 946 mix things up. Despite debuting in January and winning this spring’s Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, Royce Keys feels fresh with few televised matches in WWE to his name. His stablemates, all the more so, are unfamiliar faces to WWE main roster-only fans.
So it is that, rather than putting a fresh coat of paint on a played-out story, The 946 open possibilities for collisions fans have genuinely never seen, working The Bloodline in different singles and tag team permutations, besides the very real possibility of an impending WarGames collision that carries with it the threat of something new and different happening for the fresh faces involved.
The 946 Introduces Unpredictability
There’s something to be said for Roman Reigns and the booking around him during his dominant run at the top of WWE from 2020 into 2024. However, the ups and downs of Bloodline infighting, faction members interfering on his behalf, and The OTC emerging time and again as champion lent a certain sense of sameness to his presentation.
Enter The 946. The group launched with the surprise introduction of OTM to the main roster and a wild attack on not only The Bloodline, but the whole Raw main event scene in late August. From there, intrigue about what they’ll do next, Jacob Fatu’s loyalties, and if there will be new members have created real buzz.
Jaida Parker joining the group may have been their best moment yet. Running down The Samoan Werewolf with a car had Attitude Era influence written all over it. Add on the introduction of an unexpected new member and a continuation of the kind of realistic violence that has been this group’s calling card, and it reinforced the idea that fans must tune into Raw if only to see what The 946 will do next.
The 946 Elevates Talents New To The WWE Audience
Perhaps the most important aspect of The 946’s booking to date has been an injection of fresh faces to the top of the card. WWE has largely protected Royce Keys, such that he feels legitimate as a main event level threat with his stable behind him. Meanwhile, OTM and Jaida Parker have been set up for immediate success upon their callups with a bright spotlight and well-defined on-air roles.
Indeed, Parker’s debut has fans speculating about a returning Naomi allying with The Bloodline to counteract her, while The Usos vs. OTM feels like a natural path forward. All this paves the way for these new faces to be taken seriously for years to come, which will only be reinforced if they pick up some wins against WWE’s most established names and can, in turn, give the rub to other up and comers.
It’s far too soon to tell how The 946 will play out or what it will do for the talents involved. For now, though, The Bloodline has a new life they’ve been missing since relaunching coming out of WrestleMania season, and WWE on the whole is benefiting from this experiment.
