Karl Anderson Says Bronson Reed Should’ve Re-Planted Foot on Oba Femi

Karl Anderson has some thoughts on one of WWE Raw’s most talked-about visual moments of the year. On the latest episode of his podcast, Talk’n Shop with the Good Brothers, the former WWE Superstar broke down the viral exchange between Bronson Reed and Oba Femi from the September 7 edition of Raw, and he made it clear he thinks Reed left something on the table.

During that segment, Reed planted his foot on Femi in what became an instantly memeable show of dominance, only for Femi to swat the foot away. Anderson’s take: Reed should’ve put it right back.

It’s easy to see why the moment blew up the way it did. Oba Femi has spent the better part of the last two years positioning himself as one of the most dominant physical presences in WWE’s developmental-turned-flagship brand, a genuine giant-killer with the size and attitude to back it up. Having a bruiser the size of Bronson Reed literally put a foot on him — and having Femi shrug it off — created exactly the kind of alpha-versus-alpha visual that fans eat up and turn into instant internet fodder. Wrestling doesn’t need dialogue to tell a story sometimes, and this was one of those moments where a single image did more storytelling than a five-minute promo could.

That’s also why it’s the kind of thing that gets picked apart by veterans like Anderson, who’s built a career (first in New Japan, then WWE, and now outside of it) on exactly this sort of physical one-upmanship in tag and trios wrestling. When you spend decades in the business reading body language and power dynamics in the ring, a moment like Reed’s foot getting batted away doesn’t just register as a fun GIF — it registers as an unfinished exchange. Anderson’s instinct that Reed should have doubled down and reasserted the foot spot speaks to an old-school mentality: if you assert dominance and get punked for it, you answer back immediately or you lose the exchange in the eyes of the audience.

Whether WWE creative intended for the moment to end with Femi getting the last laugh, or whether it was simply an in-ring beat that took on a life of its own once clips hit social media, is unclear. But the fact that it’s still being dissected on podcasts weeks later says plenty about how much traction it picked up. Viral in-ring moments like this one tend to snowball into actual programs, and both Reed and Femi have the profiles to make something out of it if WWE wants to lean in.

For now, it’s just a fun bit of Monday night business that’s generated its own afterlife in wrestling media, with names like Anderson happy to add their two cents. Don’t be surprised if this exchange gets referenced again the next time Reed and Femi cross paths on WWE television.