How WWE Failed Roman Reigns

After watching the opening of Raw this week, I was inspired to write this. Let me say I think that Roman Reigns is good in the ring, I think most fans can agree on that. However, he doesn’t connect with the people in the crowd that are fans of true wrestling, the style of Styles, Bryan, Rollins, and so many more. The reason for this is how the WWE has been treating him since the Shield broke up. They are doing the same thing they did with John Cena in the mid 2000s and even Hulk Hogan to an extent in the 1980s. We are told to be fans of Reigns and that he is the guy, yet we as fans don’t want that. A great example is what happened on Raw the past few weeks. Jinder Mahal cost Roman a chance to be in the Money in the Bank ladder match. The next week Roman came out, showered by boos like usual, and when he and Jinder were brawling, when Jinder would hit Reigns, Jinder was cheered. The man that nobody thinks should be in the main event, got cheered over the guy that is supposed to be the face of the company.


One issue is the actual booking of a match. There’ve been recent matches that aid this point of the argument. The Raw before the Elimination Chamber PPV got fans emotionally invested in Seth Rollins, while at the PPV itself we got invested in Braun Strowman. Yet instead of giving us either Rollins and Strowman as the winner, we got Roman Reigns. This isn’t the only time that something like this has happened. Look at the 2015 Royal Rumble in Philadelphia, that sentence alone says a lot. In Philly, the old home of ECW, a true wrestler should have been the winner, with the logical answer being Daniel Bryan. Yet, Reigns goes on to win, and the fans were livid. Even The Rock, arguably the most popular wrestler ever, couldn’t save the end of that show. Or look at any of the 4 other Wrestlemania main events he’s had, specifically the match with The Undertaker. This was a match that not many people wanted to see, yet we get it and it underwhelms like the 2 other main events at that point. Yet the next night, after Wrestlemania 33, Roman cut the most heel promo of 2017 by just saying 5 words, “This is my yard now.” If WWE had a perfect time to turn him heel, that was it right there.
The WWE is trying to book Roman as a guy that keeps getting screwed by management and never getting his due. Cast your mind back to Daniel Bryan leading up to Wrestlemania 30. Why did it work for him and why is it not working for Roman? Daniel was the underdog and someone who was told that he wasn’t what WWE wanted in a superstar. Looking at the statistics, Daniel is 5’8” and 210 pounds while Roman is 6’3” and 265 pounds. This role doesn’t fit him as a superstar. Roman has all the means of being a WWE superstar and has the physical statistics to back it up. You add in his heritage of being a member of the legendary Anoa’i family, and it’s almost a certainty that Roman would’ve been signed by the WWE at some point in his career. In Daniels case, the statistics don’t add up to what WWE management wants as a star, and he has no famous family to fall back on. Now yes a famous family doesn’t necessarily mean that someone will have a successful run in the WWE, look at Curtis Axel or even Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa. They are the sons of former WWE superstar Haku and are arguably better than he ever was in his career. While they do have the family name that they can rely on and go to WWE easily, they are carving their own path, making their own name in the business..


The issue also lies within the character. Reigns is an arrogant, cocky, guy that knows he’s good character. That just screams heel in any wrestling promotion. The fans already boo him, and are already not interested in his matches, see the fans walking out during the match against Samoa Joe. If anything he should be a tweener like the face of one of the best wrestling promotions going in the world, the face of New Japan Pro Wrestling, Kazuchika Okada.


Okada is someone that while being a member of a face stable in CHAOS, Okada uses heel tactics (see him attacking SANADA days before their IWGP Heavyweight Title Match), but also acting like a face, and wrestling cleanly (see his match with Zack Saber Jr. at Sakura Genesis) and all of this is within his character. He will do whatever is needed to keep the IWGP Heavyweight Championship (I hope Omega takes it from him at Dominion), whether that’s acting as a heel or a face. Why can’t WWE treat Reigns like this? Let him do whatever is necessary, and that would result in him being like Okada, being a respected heel while still acting like a heel to assist his character.