wrestling / Columns
The 8 Ball: Top 8 Reasons Why Roman Reigns Should Win Money in the Bank
Back in January I did two columns arguing the pros and cons of Roman Reigns winning the Royal Rumble. His win seemed a foregone conclusion heading into the event, but when I polled readers at the end of the two columns, 80% of you were against Reigns winning. Ultimately the WWE embraced the wisdom of that crowd, course-correcting at WrestleMania by putting Seth Rollins over instead of Reigns. Now we find Roman in a similar position with the Money in the Bank match. It looks like they’re lining things up for another Reigns win and shot at the title. He paid no attention to the open Intercontinental Champion. He hasn’t answered John Cena’s open challenge for the U.S. Championship. Apparently it’s WWE World Heavyweight Championship or bust with him.
So once again I’m going to leave it to you, the 411 readership, to determine whether Reigns should get this push so soon after his last one. The poll is at the bottom of the article. I’m here to argue the cases. You’re making the call on which side prevails. One major change from the last time I did this is this will all happen in one column. The case against Reigns is, frankly, pretty straightforward. I’d be robbing it of its brutal simplicity by breaking into eight different points. Instead, I’m going to make the case against Reigns up top here (in bold) and then devote the countdown portion of the 8-Ball to why Reigns should win MITB. First the anti-Reigns case:
Roman Reigns is a corporate creation with limited ring and mic skills who got exposed earlier this year as unfit and unready to be the WWE champion. He really needs a trial stint with a secondary belt before they even think about making him the top guy in the company. Fans are not solidly behind him and you can’t pretend to be the people’s champ without that mandate coming from the people. Pushing him again this soon after his abortive Royal Rumble-WrestleMania run is only going to entrench the backlash against him. People went crazy at the end of WrestleMania because the guy who was worthy (even if he was a heel) won and the unworthy guy we thought was getting shoved down our throats lost. No organic groundswell has formed around Reigns during the past two months. He is not suddenly more worthy. The WWE needs to move in a different, non-Reigns direction with its main event scene. The only person fascinated by Roman Reigns is Vince McMahon.
See? Short and to the point. Now for the longer-winded defense of Reigns winning Money in the Bank. Remember to vote at the end. I’m not here to tell you which side is right. You’re here to tell that to me.
Reigns was supposed to go over earlier this year. They whipped out every trick in the book at the Royal Rumble to have his win receive a positive reaction: they got Daniel Bryan out early; Reigns didn’t eliminate any crowd favorites; he overcame Big Show, Kane and that diabolical Bulgaro-Russian Rusev to get the win; the Rock held his hand high at the end. Did not work. A few clunky matches and regrettable, Vince-scripted promos later and he went from inevitable to impossible. A Reigns win at WrestleMania would have ended the show with a rabid, anti-Reigns crowd (it booed practically every breath he took) venting its extreme dissatisfaction. Well, welcome to the Reigns reboot. The Rumble-Mania route didn’t work, so now they try Money in the Bank. Maybe the mood of the audience has shifted to at least apathetic. Hate takes a lot of work. If they keep pushing him, one of these days the resistance will dissipate and they’ll get their way.
Reigns took one for the team at WrestleMania. It was supposed to be his crowning moment and instead they gave it to Seth Rollins. Sure, it was epic and almost universally praised, but that had to be a gut punch for Reigns. He was thisclose to reaching the pinnacle of the business. Sometimes that opportunity goes away and never comes back. Note all the world championships Wade Barrett’s never won. Anyone who’s heard the Colt Cabana podcast with CM Punk from last year knows the tale of how loyalty may not be a two-way street in the WWE. Yet Vince quite possibly owes one to Roman Reigns and this would be an opportunity to square the account.
The E hasn’t exactly stacked this MITB match with the next generation of main eventers. Randy Orton and Dolph Ziggler are former MITB winners. Both had memorable cash-ins, but Orton doesn’t make a lot of sense here. The briefcase won’t raise his prestige and he just had a feud with Seth Rollins. Ziggler with another briefcase would be fun, but he would seem to be a long shot at this moment. MITB is one of the few things Sheamus hasn’t won. Not sure he needs it now. He’s one of those guys who can take out the champ and immediately be in title contention. Much as I’d love Kofi Kingston to get a shock win here, thus kicking New Day up another notch, that’s about as likely Kofi, Big E and Xavier Woods entering to Hüsker Dü’s “New Day Rising”. Awesome as it would be, it’s not happening. The final entrant is Neville. I’m for him winning at MITB, but it would be an aggressive push for him. Chasing a secondary belt would seem his more logical career path. That leaves Reigns as the one guy who hasn’t won a world title but who is on the cusp of getting there. This entire match is shaping up as five guys to provide an entertaining distraction until Reigns gets the inevitable win.
One of the complaints about Reigns potentially going over at WrestleMania was that he hadn’t earned the honor. Winning the title at Mania is an exponentially bigger deal than winning it the rest of year. However, just because Reigns might not have been ready to join the immortals doesn’t mean he’s not ready to win the title. Now that the historical implications have been lessened, perhaps fans will be more willing to give him a chance as the champion. I made a variation of this argument last year at Money in the Bank. Reigns was all kinds of hot coming off the Shield split. Had he won the title instead of John Cena, the live crowd would have loved it. He’d have been something fresh, if a little underripe. Summer’s a more relaxed season for everyone. If you give Roman Reigns a try and it doesn’t work out, no major harm done. Sometimes a MITB cash-in doesn’t lead to a permanent stay in the main event (e.g. Jack Swagger, Rob Van Dam, Kane, Dolph Ziggler). If it does work out, then there’s an unlimited number of ways to set him up for some megamatch at WrestleMania 32.
As flawed as the WWE product has been of late, there does seem to be a concerted effort to build a main event scene that does not involve John Cena. As much as fans may not be buying Reigns as the next in the Hogan-Austin-Cena line of megafaces, giving him a push at least reflects an attempt to change the status quo inside the E. Better to try and fail than not to try at all. If Vince McMahon thinks Reigns is going to be the special one, the guy to whom he hands the preposterous, Superman, bury-everyone-in-your-path booking, then he ought to give it a whirl. Getting unstuck from Cena is the first step toward some actual change for the WWE. At the very least, Reigns probably won’t be cutting drawn out promos questioning the manhood of some guy who just beat him in a fair fight. Also, a Reigns win has got to go over better than Cena’s WWE title win to close MITB last year.
For whatever reason, Reigns seems to get big pops and positive reactions in Texas. I don’t pay strict attention to where the WWE travelling show is these days, but a few times now when I’ve noticed a crowd really likes Reigns, he’s in Texas. It’s a reminder that he does have some fans. I don’t think it’s a kids vs. adults split, likely it’s more of a marks vs. smarks split. Some people, and I’ve never been one of them, believe your duty as a fan is to root for the good guy against the bad guys at a wrestling event. That’s our role in this little staged drama. Roman Reigns is there to overcome impossible odds and we’re supposed to cheer him on. That is a perfectly viable opinion. If you have fun playing the role of mark, then go with it. On the flipside you’ve got smarks (more smart-ass than smart), who take the opinion that they get to pick who they like. Might not be the guy who’s kissing our collective asses, probably isn’t. I still remember being at a show in Hartford in the mid-1980s when Paul Orndorff hit Hulk Hogan with two piledrivers and then yelled at the audience for five minutes for calling him Paula. My brain practically exploded from screaming “Pin him!” I was firmly in the Wonderful camp and tired of Hulkamania before the first WrestleMania ever took place. Yet that’s a healthy tension. Fans that don’t like Reigns aren’t shy about booing him (e.g. Royal Rumble 2015, WrestleMania 31). Fans that do like him are rallying to the cause. MIght be interesting to see where this goes. Can he win over the doubters or will the believers get played for chumps? Or maybe we draw new fan battle lines in the WWE drama.
Seth Rollins did a stellar job of carrying the MITB briefcase. It’s easy to forget just how much damage was done to the gimmick with Damien Sandow’s colossal failure in both carrying it and cashing it in. Rollins had to stalk and ultimately prevail over Brock Lesnar in full beast mode. Arguably, that was the highest degree of difficulty for any MITB holder ever. The Rollins story turned out to be epic, and now the MITB briefcase has been restored to its former glory. It does feel like the next winner inevitably will become champion. Yet you probably don’t want the next holder to be a repeat of the Rollins story. That briefcase is hot. Use it fast. On top of that, faces tend to cash in quickly. It’s the face way – carpe diem and damn the consequences. Reigns is a face, at least according to the current kayfabe. He’s also the guy who got pinned when Rollins cashed in. No one should be more motivated to use that briefcase than Reigns. He should have no interest in carrying it around. In Reign’s hands, that thing is more timebomb than briefcase. Cashing in at MITB would make all the sense in the world for his character.
The directions they can with a Reigns MITB win are fairly enticing. Perhaps he cashes in on Rollins to end the show. Perhaps Rollins is sly like a fox and constantly thwarts Reigns’ cash-in attempts. Perhaps Reigns cashes in during the Rollins-Ambrose ladder match, turning it into a three-way and he does a double top-of-ladder celebration that night. Perhaps Ambrose turns on Reigns after he cashes in. Perhaps Ambrose, in lunatic fringe mode, ruins Reigns’ cash-in attempts. Perhaps Ambrose wins his ladder match and then Reigns has to wrestle with whether he cashes in on his buddy. Perhaps Ambrose wins and Reigns immediately cashes in on him, lining us up for the Rollins-Ambrose-Reigns clash we’ve always wanted at SummerSlam. For the record, that’s the one I’d do. It would turn Reigns toward the dark side, where I think he works better. It would strap a rocket to Ambrose’s back (Summer of Ambrose) and it would open a fascinating new chapter for Rollins. Got to think that would ultimately lead to Reigns becoming the glowering face of the Authority. The WWE main event scene would be radically redefined around the three former Shield guys. That’s damn-near Shakespearean drama right there. Bigger point is, Reigns getting the briefcase creates the potential for all kinds of payoffs and plot twists. In terms of story arc, Reigns makes sense. Even you think Reigns is bullshit, in this case he might act more like fertilizer for the next few years of WWE storytelling.
