About Roman

[SlightlyJames]

I've been starting to ponder this more and more in recent months, but a small thing like an edit WWE made to the replay of last week's US title match was the most recent example of their peculiar attempts to manipulate perception of Roman Reigns and it made me want to finally make this post.

As I remember it, the original resistance to Roman Reigns was that he was a green guy with little experience as a singles wrestler. We didn't like the fact that he was so clearly destined for the top spot, especially in place of more established fan favourite guys at the time, Daniel Bryan being the most prominent example.

He's been thrust into the main event of Wrestlemania two years running with very poor fan response. During his run, guys like Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler have gotten hot and had the full backing of the crowd, but we've seen that whenever those situations arise, the WWE acts quickly to either nip their popularity in the bud or use them to feed the Reigns agenda.

Over the course of his run on the top, Roman has grown a lot as an in-ring performer. There are still flaws in his work and the people are very perceptive of that (guy can't rest during a match without getting "Roman's sleeping" chants) but in general he's come to be a reliable guy who can put on consistently good matches, with the right opponent. AJ Styles credits his time working with Roman for solidifying him as a main event guy.

With that in mind, the guy is still very hard to support, and aside from being somewhat of a weak promo I don't think he can be blamed. It's easy to see that the biggest thing Roman has working against him is the way the WWE go about protecting the guy.

To see what I mean all you need to do is take a look at Braun Strowman. His matches are worse than Roman's, he can't sell for shit, he goes over guys like Sami Zayn who are near universally loved but he's getting over without resistance and do you know why? They're honest about it.

Braun Strowman isn't framed as an underdog when he wins all the time, he doesn't need guys like The Rock and Daniel Bryan raising his hand and putting him over on the mic, he doesn't get crowd noise altered to try and trick people into thinking he's more over than he is, he's not still coming out to Bray Wyatt's music and telling people to follow the Buzzards. He's a bad dude with a short temper and he fucking beats people up.

We're less than three years out from the main event of Wrestlemania 30 teaching us as fans that our reaction to a guy really matters. It baffles me that the same company that runs that storyline and sees what an incredible moment they managed to create isn't able to recognise the effect their meddling is having on Roman.

You see guys like Jericho come out and say that 'people only boo Roman Reigns because it's the cool thing to do'. Is it really that hard to understand that the company dug itself into this hole?

They can't seem to stop digging either.

[Hanley!]

They're still mishandling Roman, but honestly I think the reason that people are booing Roman Reigns now is out of stubbornness. I'm not bashing the fans by saying that either. I can understand why they're being stubborn, and I don't have a problem with it. But at this point, I don't think there's anything they could do with Roman to get him a positive face reaction. The only way to get the fans back on side would be to turn him heel.

At first, fans booed Reigns because they wanted Daniel Bryan to win the Rumble and he was being passed over for a more Vince McMahon type prospect, even though Bryan was clearly the most over guy in the company by leaps and bounds. That's an understandable reason to be pissed about Reigns as a top star, even though if he was only a victim of circumstance.

Another part of it was that his rise just seemed presumptuous. I don't think the problem was that he was too green or hadn't paid his dues enough. It's that he had only had one singles match on pay per view before he won the Royal Rumble and WWE hadn't bothered to give him a big storyline push to get fans invested in him on that level. WWE knew he was the next guy, the fans knew he was the next guy, and the WWE knew that the fans knew he was the next guy ... so they didn't make the effort. A couple of cool feuds, some memorable moments and some big wins before he won the Rumble might have been enough to make the fans embrace him as that top face.

For a while after that fans booed him because he was cutting terrible promos or because he was being over-pushed. But more than anything, after a while they were just booing him out of spite. The WWE tried a bunch of things to get Reigns over as their top face and it failed every time. Each time the fans rejected him and told the company they saw him as a heel. After a certain point, it didn't matter what WWE tried. The audience's mentality was "fuck off, we've told you a dozen times we don't want this guy". And that's fair enough. They were sick of the mere idea of him by then, and the customer is always right. If you're not giving them what they want, give them something else.

The company were stubborn with Roman, and now the fans are being stubborn too. This is going to be a never-ending battle of wills. Unless one day the company finally sees sense and turns the guy heel. Because the audience are never going to back down on this.

[Str8Shooter]

The latest rumour is Roman facing Taker at Mania. That would be the final nail in the coffin for his babyface career going against Taker at Mania.