The 8 Ball: Top 8 Ways to Turn Roman Reigns Heel

Top 8 Ways to Turn Roman Reigns Heel

Rumor circulated earlier this week that the WWE has woken up to the reality that Roman Reigns has failed to gain traction as a babyface and now plans are for a heel turn. When and how weren’t specified, and like most rumors it probably isn’t true. That said, it would be an excellent idea. That rumor should be true. It’s got truthiness going for it. Your gut feels it to be true, right?

The WWE has set the stage for Reigns’ journey to the darkside. Losing at WrestleMania was a setback, but failing to win Money in the Bank marks a career shift for the Samoan heartthrob. He’s no longer the champ in waiting. Reigns’ ascension no longer feels imminent. We’re not talking about when with Reigns these days. We’re talking about if. He’s not even chasing secondary belts at the moment. Roman’s character is proving to be remarkably unambitious, either that or he’s so full of himself he won’t even bother with lesser titles.

Heel turns make sense in pro wrestling. It’s supposedly a combat sport. Anger provides direction. Most of the time a heel turn simply reflects a wrestler who’s getting down to business. Reigns has become unfocused. Better to zero in on kicking ass and taking names. Politics be damned, Roman Reigns is really good at beating up other people. In fact, it’s his job. A heel turn is just a statement that you want to be employee of the month. With that in mind, time to shake the Magic 8-Ball and determine the best ways for Roman Reigns to earn our enmity.

8. Unlucky Friend

The most direct way to turn Reigns heel would be to have him betray Dean Ambrose. No crime in wrestling greater than turning on your friend. It’s easily done. Reigns and Ambrose get into a high stakes situation and Reigns either lays Dean out or leaves him high and dry. Paul Orndorff and Randy Savage famously did it to Hulk Hogan. Shawn Michaels did it to Marty Jannetty. Seth Rollins did it to Ambrose and Reigns. In Reigns’ case, last year’s betrayal by Rollins would make him turning on Ambrose even more heinous. I mean, Ambrose has stuck by him through thick and thin. If Reigns rewards that with a stab in the back, what a stinker. The fuel for it is there. We’ve all heard Ambrose draw cheers while Reigns gets catcalls. The difference at SummerSlam was stark. This only ranks #8 on the list though because it’s too easy. It’s the lazy man’s turn. Maybe that’s fitting here since fans already want to boo the guy. No major explanation needed, just get on with booing him like many of you already were doing.

7. All in the Family

If they want to take Reigns’ betrayal of Ambrose to the next level, then they could combine it with Reigns joining the Wyatt Family. It’s similar to the choice Rollins made to join the Authority. Find the baddest force out there and align yourself with it. The timing’s kind of right for it. Imagine Bray Wyatt’s Survivor Series team if Reigns is in the fold. That’s a potent faction. Not a tiny guy among them. They’d instantly become an evil entity on par with the Authority. Hopefully it would lead to a tense coexistence where they’re constantly on the verge of having hostilities break out. Bray also can do Roman’s gabbing for him. Wyatt probably works better as a mouthpiece for glowering forces of nature like Reigns and Strowman than he does as a guy with a nebulous personal agenda. He needs puppets to master. When he’s got a cast of misfits behind him, he takes on a pied piper quality. Sure he’s talking crazy, but his disciples are thriving. Wyatt and Reigns together would be the core a formidable team.

6. Strange Bedfellows

Wyatt isn’t the only mid-card baddie who’d pair well with Reigns. Sheamus and Wade Barrett would be good fits. If Randy Orton went back to his wicked ways, Reigns taking pointers from the Viper would be a lot of fun. Yet the 8-Ball thinks Rusev would be an especially nice fit with Reigns. Both had their dreams shattered at WrestleMania 31. Had they won their respective matches that night, Reigns vs. Rusev probably headlines SummerSlam. They were the final two combatants in this year’s Royal Rumble too. Most of all, Rusev is Russian by proxy. Vladimir Putin no doubt has installed a neural transmitter in Rusev’s brain so he can receive unfiltered messages from the supreme leader. As we all know, aligning yourself with a Russian is a cardinal sin in pro wrestling. It’s like binding Toby Keith and Carli Lloyd with American flags and then lighting them on fire with your napalm-urine (which I believe is a side effect of taking Jublia … or maybe it’s Xarelto). Utterly despicable. Turning your back on your friends is one thing, but turning your back on America? Unforgivable.

5. Angry Samoan

All right, you caught me. This entire column was conceived as an excuse for me to make Angry Samoans references. To be fair, I don’t really need much of an excuse, but Reigns got over in the first place by being a remorseless wrecking machine who delighted in putting other guys’ lights out. He tore through the WWE roster like a steak knife, particularly during the 2014 Royal Rumble. We got a peek inside his brain at WrestleMania 31, when he laughed at the punishment he was taking from Brock Lesnar. Roman is no cuddly babyface. He’s a sadomasochist, trapped inside his twisted mind, barely human, not of this earth. Paul Heyman alluded to it when he talked about Reigns’ feral upbringing at the hands of his old man, Sika, who may be a fatso, but once upon a time he and his brother Afa owned this house. Why is Roman being nice to anybody when what he should want to do is tear people apart and toss their limbs in a garbage pit? They neutered him when they tried to make him a fan favorite and it’s left him killing time for the past 18 months when he should have been inflicting maximum damage. Fear should be his weapon, he should be too animalistic for the competition. Imagine if Roman Reigns is on the move and now you’re scared what he’s gonna do?

4. Hoof in Mouth Disease

We all know one proven way to get fans to turn on Reigns: hand him a microphone and let him talk a lot. Thufferin’ thuccotash. Let him drone on and on, with douchey little comments thrown in. Mention how everyone knows Roman Reigns is the future of the company. In fact, make sure he refers to himself in the third person all the time. Rather than mask over his deficits, expose them. Remind people why they soured on him in the early portion of the year. Troll the audience with a big Reigns promo twice each week. He’d become a car crash segment, with viewers rubbernecking to see how bad the crowd rips into him. He could set off arena bombs with something as simple as, “My name is Roman Reigns, and Roman Reigns has something to say.” No, not the talking. Anything but the talking.

3. Open Challenger

I mentioned above how strange it is that Reigns hasn’t been the least bit interested in either the U.S. or Intercontinental titles. It’s especially strange when you consider John Cena had an open challenge every Monday night. Can’t blame it on both Reigns and Cena being faces. Dean Ambrose was the first guy to take a crack at it. Sami Zayn gave it shot. Cesaro turned face while going after Cena’s belt. Reigns could have stepped up, but he didn’t. That can be mined. If Cena gets the belt back at Night of Champions, maybe he questions why Reigns hasn’t answered the open challenge. Then Reigns can play it aloof, claiming if he won the U.S. title, the first thing he’d do is throw it away. Thus a heel is born.

Alternately Reigns could answer the open challenge without any goading from Cena. This one is a bit tricky, since fighting and beating John Cena is the optimum way to mint a new mega-face. I submit Punk, C.M. and Bryan, Daniel as evidence. It’s especially tricky if they try this in a smark town. Say Reigns takes up the challenge in Chicago or Philly, two cities where he’s been mercilessly booed this year. Suddenly he’d gain fan approval for going darkside and fighting the WWE’s corporate spokesman. It would be a widely celebrated heel turn, which the E likely does not want. However, Reigns gets big pops in Texas. I don’t understand why. Maybe the WWE draws more traditional crowds there. If he challenged Cena in Texas and cheated to win, or dished out a beat down after a loss, the crowd probably could be counted to deliver a “why, Roman, why” reaction. They’ve bought into his good guy status and they’d feel the betrayal. As it happens, the WWE is headed to Texas this coming week. Location, location, location.

2. NXT Killer

Reigns has been with the WWE almost three years now and he’s won exactly zero singles titles. He and Seth Rollins were tag champs back in 2013, but subsequent events make it look like maybe that had a lot more to do with Rollins than Reigns. Roman is on the verge becoming old news. He already didn’t happen. Worse for him, NXT is set to pump out a steady stream of new talent into the WWE. Neville is doing well for himself. Kevin Owens is insanely over (and trying every trick in the book to stay heel). When Sami Zayn gets healthy he will instantly become more popular than Reigns. Finn Balor should go over huge as well. Simply put, these guys are taking his spot. It would be perfectly understandable if he’s not okay with that. We’d prefer these never-wases to Reigns? We want to get behind a pack of glorified mid-carders rather than the most ready-made superstar of this generation? We’re idiots and Reigns can mow down NXT callups to prove his point. If we won’t love him, then he’ll tear apart the ones we do love.

1. Plan B

It’s been awhile since the Authority did anything truly nefarious. Ever since they got reinstated at the end of December they’ve been pretty smug, like the view from the top is amazing and we can’t appreciate how awesome it is to be them. Yet if they’re bad to the bone, maybe that only means they’re doing their evil deeds behind the scenes. Think about the past year. They had a champion they could not hope to control in Brock Lesnar. Eventually their chosen one, Seth Rollins, won the belt off of him. Of course, Rollins did that by pinning Roman Reigns. Yet what if that had failed? What was Plan B? Maybe Plan B was Roman Reigns and he’d been put in place originally to deal with the Daniel Bryan threat. Maybe they bought ⅔ of the Shield instead of ⅓. Rollins would take the heat as the Authority’s brash chosen one while Reigns worked as a mole babyface. Note how Rollins hit Ambrose with that chair a whole lot more than he did Reigns. And wasn’t it odd how Roman immediately moved on? Two different tracks, same goal – Authority regains control of the WWE Championship.

The upside on this is you can do a slow motion reveal. Have pictures of Reigns and HHH showing up on Instagram and Twitter. There they are lifting together. There they are having lunch. There they are sharing a laugh together backstage. At first people can dismiss it as noise on their social media signal, but then have folks like Ambrose comment on it as being strange. Show the photos on Raw and Smackdown broadcasts. Have Bill Apter or someone write a column, asking what’s with all these photos of Reigns and Trips together. Supposedly they’re sworn enemies. Then you drop in a shot of Reigns and Rollins together, posing for a shot with big smiles on their faces. What?! To add even more fuel to the fire, leak a story that last year’s Superstar of the Year at the Slammys was definitely fixed (which it probably was). In kayfabe, Reigns continues to act like he’s fighting the good fight, but the distrust builds until he turns to the Titantron in the middle of segment that’s flatlining and says, “Guys, I don’t know what to do here.” Then HHH and Stephanie step out, with one of them saying, “Well, I guess the jig is up.” They can go on to explain how they’ve been playing us all for the past 18 months and laugh about how we never suspected a thing until those pictures made the rounds. That’s evil I can believe in, true corporate malevolence laid bare.

I take requests.. The purpose of this column is to look forward. What could be? What should be? What is and what should never be? What would make more sense? 411 has plenty of columns that count down and rank things that happened in the past. This is not one of those columns. The Magic 8-Ball is here to gaze into the future. If there’s someone or something you think should be given the 8-Ball treatment, mention it in the comments section. I might pick it up for future weeks.