Propping Up Roman Reigns

Propping Up Roman

“They say in our business, you never know how good someone is until you get in the ring with them. And I can tell you… Roman Reigns is every bit the man he says he is… One of the better men I’ve ever been in the ring with.”

As I watched AJ Styles’ in-ring promo from Monday Night Raw this past week, and I heard him say these words, a sense of déjà vu swept over me. It instigated some kind of niggling in the back of my mind, as if I’d ridden this ride before. But where? AJ Styles, one of the fans’ more beloved independent wrestlers, had come out to pump Roman Reigns’ tires just one night after falling to him in the main event of a WWE pay-per-view show. Why was this so familiar…? I dug through my mental archives until…

“… though I know a lot of people see a lot of potential in Roman Reigns, the biggest Roman Reigns doubter is right here… because when they talk about promise and they talk about potential, what they’re really talking about is size and strength and athletic ability. And do you know how many guys I’ve see walk down that ramp with all that who don’t have half the heart that I do? … And that is why I didn’t like you. Last night, I had an opportunity… and I gave it every single thing that I had… and I still didn’t do it… I gave it every single thing that I had, and it wasn’t me… you proved to me last night that you have more heart than I ever thought that you did. I don’t care how many people are booing you here tonight, you and I know that last night we fought… And guess what, sir, you beat me. I put it all on the table, and all I have left to say is this: congratulations.”

Oh, right. THAT’S why.

If that promo does not sound familiar to you, I will refresh your memory. That is a promo delivered by Daniel Bryan, one of the fans’ more beloved independent wrestlers, just one night after falling to Roman Reigns in the main event of a WWE pay-per-view show.

(As an aside? That promo is fiery. People have said that, for all Bryan’s attributes, mic work wasn’t one of his finer talents, but I call hogwash on that. Dude absolutely brought the intensity when it was appropriate)

So I dug both of these spiels up, I set them up in separate tabs, and I had a thought after comparing them: if WWE continually feels the need to get one of their most popular superstars to hit the ring just to tell us “Hey guys, it’s cool, don’t boo. Roman is really great! Here is my official seal of approval!”, then shouldn’t that tell them something? If a seven year old with a camera phone filmed himself smashing his action figures into each other for 15 minutes, it doesn’t become a better piece of cinematography just because the kid’s dad pays Martin Scorsese to come out and tell me “Hey, I don’t know about you, but this is definitely one of the best films I’VE ever seen!”. No, it just comes off as the transparent ploy that it is to put over an inferior product. If you have to do that to build something up, you clearly know that it isn’t good enough to stand on its own merits, right?

Now, no, I’m not saying WWE held a gun to Daniel Bryan or AJ Styles and forced them to go out and give Roman the ol’ verbal fellatin’; I’m sure Bryan and Styles were happy to go out there and put over a co-worker a guy they know personally and want to see succeed. But that doesn’t make the act of it feel any less unnatural and forced. They might as well have put giant, flashing letters on the screen that blinked “SEE? ROMAN IS SUPER COOL, GUYS! CHEER FOR HIM! WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ROMAN, GUYS?”

At this point, we are just about two years into The Roman Empire Era. And for about the last year, we as a fanbase have already been playing the “They Should Turn Him Heel!” game. I’m sure you remember this game… WWE fans played it for a decade or so with John Cena. But it never happened with Cena, and it’s never going to happen with Reigns. If you haven’t noticed, they’re already starting to mention Reigns’ work with (The Make-A-Wish Foundation, and hasn’t one of the go-to reasons as to why Big Match John never went to the dark side always been “For God’s sake, think of the children?!” Well that baton has now been passed to The Guy. And haven’t there been some many opportunities already where it would have made sense for him to turn of the fans(Against Dean? Against AJ?), but those roads were left untaken? So the cycle with self-perpetuate: Roman will be an insufferably grating babyface, the fans will say “We hate him! He’d be a great heel because we want to boo him!”, Roman will never turn heel, the fans hate him more because he never goes bad and that will make them think he needs to turn heel more, but he won’t, so they’ll hate him even more… ad nausea until he retires and starts doing movies.

I’ll be honest… beyond that cycle of wanting a heel turn that will never come, I don’t see a lot in common between Roman and John. Since I’ve already alienated the portion of readers who are tired of seeing people crap on Roman, I’ll take this moment to likely alienate the rest of you: I actually like John Cena. I almost always have. He’s never been a top favorite of mine, but I’ve generally been entertained by him and liked his programs. And at least with Cena, there seemed to be an unspoken contract: we, the fans, booed and harassed and taunted him, he played it up with his frustratingly charming smile and personality, and then we’d boo him harder since he was so damn unflappable. We’d tell him he couldn’t wrestle, we’d sing that he sucks (to the tune of his own music), but when it came down to it, Cena was a vibrant guy who was a quality entertainer. I know he made a lot of childish jokes, and I know that when he wasn’t doing that, he was over dramatically yelling, but it just worked for him in the ring. To me, booing Cena was fun because it was a game and he was in on it and it was a part of the character. When Cena had to miss time with injuries, I genuinely missed his presence. He added value to the show.

Booing Roman Reigns… is not fun. It’s not a game, and it isn’t fulfilling Everything Roman does makes WWE feel more tedious. Now, the Empire Man can put on some darn good matches (but even then, I’m going to throw a potentially unpopular differentiation at you: John Cena could occasionally elevate lower level talent to a more respectable match than they otherwise would have been capable of without him, and he could have amazing matches with top-shelf talent; Roman only seems carryable by the more talented guys, and I’ve yet to see a match where I thought “Oh, that match was good BECAUSE OF ROMAN”), but his personality is the absolute pits. Sufferin’ succotash and tater tots, yeah—we all know he isn’t exactly getting Oscar material to spit at us—but has the guy ever had a memorable promo (Heh. Well, memorable in a GOOD way)? They are all so stunted and monotone and generic that I can hardly differentiate one from the next. It’s not fun, it’s not enjoyable, and it’s not even a game to jeer him. I boo Roman Reigns because I want him to just go away and stop making the WWE less enjoyably.

Not that it matters, because whether we as fans continue to jeer Roman or if we start giving him a hero’s welcome, The Guy is here to stay. WWE will play the It-Doesn’t-Matter-What-Kind-Of-Reaction-You-Get-As-Long-As-You-Get-A-Reaction card as a reason to keep Reigns at the forefront of their product for years and years. It is relatively amusing to me that the fans can boo Roman out of a building, and WWE will say “Yes! The fans want to interact with this guy!”, but talent like Dolph Ziggler or Cody Rhodes or Cesaro or Damien Sandow or Zack Ryder had each, at times, gotten massive reactions in their careers, and WWE’s reaction was “Well, this doesn’t make sense, and we have no idea how to capitalize on it. Best to just ignore it and hope it goes away”. This is why people have made a meme out of the time Vince McMahon said “It’s not about what I want… I’m a pretty good listener”. Roman Reigns isn’t the only guy on the roster getting reactions, but he is seemingly the only one for whom those reactions matter.

That’s why it didn’t ring true last year when Daniel Bryan came out and put Roman on a pedestal, nor was it organic when AJ did it this week. But they are just going to keep trying, so I guess what I’m saying is, don’t be too surprised next year when, after losing to Roman Reigns the night before on a WWE pay-per-view show, Shinsuke Nakamura comes out to tell an annoyed crowd “Wow, I may be the King of Strong Style, but after last night, you should all know that Roman Reigns is the strongest one of all”. We’ve been subject to it all before, and WWE can’t just tell people to ignore the man behind the curtain because the image they want to project is more potent.