Royal Rumble fallout: Is Roman Reigns just bad for business?
The usual talk from the Roman Reigns fans basically is this: “He deserved it because he worked hard. Last year you wanted him to win but this year you boo him for winning the Rumble. You’re never satisfied.” As it’s usually the case for any fanbase that’s just one side of the coin. So, last year Roman Reigns was just cheered for the win when he was one on one with Batista as the two remaining competitors inside the ring. In the end Batista won and fans complained because the man only came back to WWE a few weeks before and was there just for the Wrestlemania season. Reigns though was still part of The Shield where he carried a much more fitting gimmick: the silent assassin who gets the hot tag to win the matches.
The gimmick
What changed about Roman Reigns from last year is, that he’s been shoved down all of our throats. He wins every match but I can hardly recognize any storytelling. It’s just him, the powerful guy, who even started to knock down two guys at once with the Superman Punch recently. The Shield needed three guys to hit a powerbomb on one guy; Roman Reigns will soon only need one Superman Punch to knock out three guys. At the end of his matches when he roars like some deer during the rut, he’ll do his finishing move set without a iot of change to win despite of any punishment that he may have faced during the match. Sometimes he appears like almost dead but from one second to the next he’ll be on 100 percent again like nothing happened. I’m not able to connect with him or even feel for him, because he doesn’t make it believable. And you almost already know – like it’s the case with John Cena – that in the end Roman Reigns always wins. This is a boring gimmick but for some reason WWE just doesn’t realize. The more people boo him, the more WWE shoves him down our throats when quite the opposite would probably help his cause.
Rumble fiasco
And they made it even worse after Reigns had won the Rumble with beating him down by Big Show and Kane. Perhaps that was done to make the people in Philadelphia finally feel for him. But then The Rock, Reigns’ cousin, came out to save Reigns and then stood tall with him in the ring to celebrate. All this was done to minimize the boos towards Reigns at all costs. Instead it created some heavily trending hashtag on Twitter called #CancelWWENetwork. Well, I never got the Network, so I couldn’t cancel it but I guess many people really did. Not just because Daniel Bryan didn’t win; not just because Dean Ambrose didn’t win; not just because Dolph Ziggler didn’t win; not even because Roman Reigns won. Most people quit because we all knew that Reigns will win since last October / November and WWE desperately tried ever since to make us believe Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler were actually “considered” when they were not. Right now I even think that Daniel Bryan was made to come back too early from his injury to make fans believe that there is another one who could win. Roman Reigns as the actual winner was never really mentioned during the last days before the Royal Rumble. So, WWE again thought that the fans are dumb, have no memory and will take the Reigns win as an actual surprise when it just felt like a hard hit back to reality.