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Initial Resistance to Reigns' Rise

2K views 25 replies 18 participants last post by  Drago 
#1 ·
Greetings fellow WWE fans,

I'm a 30 year fan of the product. My preferred psychology in this industry is the realism of the Iron Man match in Wrestlemania 12. I appreciate the psychology of wrestling above all else.

At the 2015 Royal Rumble, I believe the rejection of Reigns (and subsequent decision to have Rollins cash in) was largely in response to a horrificly poor anticipation of the crowd by WWE creative in regards to Daniel Bryan. Then, the match was booked in the most bring manner possible (Kane/Big Show dominance with no believable alternative winners apart from Reigns).

As a result, the crowd booed the match.

The crow rejected the product.

Roman Reigns bore the brunt of it and became the symbol of everything fans were sick of behind the scenes (bad booking, unfair treatment of Daniel Bryan, and poor creative decisions made in commercial interests without paying attention to what the crowd wants).

Afterwards, the mud stuck - unfairly. The narrative became cool to stick it to Reigns and by extension they were sticking it to the bland decisions being made behind the scenes, rather than actively disliking Reigns himself.

Ever since, I strongly believe that (ahem) Reigns getting booed wasn't his fault.

The boos were toward the booking of the product. Reigns was caught in the crossfire. Months went by and these boos were misinterpreted...

To what extent was the temporary resistance to Reigns' rise really about the product in general and the way they initially thought they could tell us what we should like? I felt like the WWE insulted fans with the way they booked that Rumble and it cost them 11 months of nearly spoiling a perfectly good superstar before figuring out how to let him get over a little more organically.
 
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#7 ·
I don't think they were shocked with the crowd reaction towards Bryan. I think they very much anticipated it, which is why they booked the two most despised wrestlers in the company, both in and out of kayfabe, to vomit on everyone else in the Rumble, and then have Reigns defeat them. It's why they had The Rock standing by to go out there and give Reigns a champion's celebration. They thought if Bryan was out early, and the rest of our most beloved characters stayed till the end, like Ziggler, Ambrose and Wyatt, they could just have Pig Slow and Shame go around sharting in each of their mouths, and then we'd appreciate when Reigns knocked them out.

It wasn't poorly anticipated, because they knew it was a shit move that wasn't going to be well received, and they designed the entire match around that fact. Instead, it was just absolutely miscalculated, and atrociously executed.

If Reigns was winning, Bryan never should have returned to the WWE until after the rumble. Reigns should have been in the final four with Ziggler, Wyatt and Ambrose, and if turning Reigns heel was simply not an option, they should have had the match end with Ambrose clotheslining Wyatt, throwing them both over the rope. It plays into Ambrose's erratic personality, it plays into his feud with Wyatt, and it gives both Heyman and Reigns the most straight-forward road to Wrestlemania program: Reigns didn't deserve to win, and now Reigns believes that he has to prove that he did. If you want to use Rock, use him as a mentor, not as a cheerleader.
 
#11 · (Edited)
It's still very much in the air. The sense of predictability is what's killing WWE. The fact that most people know exactly what's going to happen 6 months in advance, and the die hard fans are sick of it. It wasn't Reigns fault, per se. Sure, he wasn't the smark favorite to reach the top, but it would have at least been accepted had it been given a chance to happen naturally. Now the whole situation is in disarray, and Reigns is forced to carry this around with him because WWE completely botched their "anointment" of him.

So yeah, like I said.....the whole situation is still very much so up in the air.
 
#15 ·
Reigns deserved those boos. In a way he earned them.

Don't forget he was an arrogant piss ant in the pre wrestlemania build in numerous interviews. He told fans to suck it up. Heel actions. You don't talk down on fans and expect fan support at your big wrestlemania main event.

He honestly should have been fined or suspended for fucking that up. He ruined Mcmahons perfect dream wrestlemania. Mcmahon wanted it bad...

So in a way Reigns is lucky Mcmahon didn't catch on to all those interviews. Although that was really Mcmahons own fault. He knew Reigns wasn't ready.
 
#4 ·
He still isn't getting over organically, they gave us a little glimpse of the Reigns we wanted and everyone fell for it, he's still the smiling goofy baby face opening RAW with awful promos, he's still being booked as Cena 2.0, the resistance had a lot to do with the product but it had a lot to do with Reigns, people didn't feel he was ready because he wasn't, didn't like that he was being shoved in everyone's faces anyway, so the fans rebelled against him, it's pretty unbelievable how he's on his way to getting over, yet they haven't changed a thing, all he's done is attack HHH, hit Vince and beat up the LON, other than that he's the same thing he has 3 months ago, yet people for some reason think they're getting this big bad ass Samoan ass kicker now, like no, you're not, you're getting the same shit you were booing 3 months ago but Vince tricked ya'll into believing it
 
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#10 · (Edited)
...they haven't changed a thing, all he's done is attack HHH, hit Vince and beat up the LON, other than that he's the same thing he has 3 months ago, yet people for some reason think they're getting this big bad ass Samoan ass kicker now, like no, you're not, you're getting the same shit you were booing 3 months ago but Vince tricked ya'll into believing it
I believe the concept of being "tricked" into liking a wrestler is merely another way of describing the true art of good wrestling - successful suspension of disbelief.

Take the 1996 Iron Man match for example.

Vince's commentary was brilliant. He led us to anticipate Shawn coming out all flashy... but instead he beat Bret at his own technical game for the first 30 minutes of the match. When Bret was forced to try and beat Shawn at his own high-flying game, he failed. That's a key reason why Shawn dominated the match.

It's true another way of describing the match is "Vince tricked us into cheering for Shawn".

But yeah, that's wrestling. Good wrestling, IMO.

It's a similar situation to saying the Big Bang Theory writers tricked us into laughing at Sheldon's jokes, after they wrote a few lame jokes in a previous episode. In wrestling, it's much harder to maintain suspension of disbelief compared to other scripted shows. I guess the issue dances on the boundaries of kayfabe.

IMO two things have changed with the booking of Roman Reigns.

1. He's slightly less scripted word-for-word (but it's only halfway there - they still need to give him more freedom, like after Raw)

2. He's more of an ass-kicker now and less of a children's champion in the ring (but he'll still need to display a wider range of moves in big PPV matches to keep us interested - surprise us by coming into a big match with a major strategy change due to his opponent, like Shawn against Bret)

Reigns has the potential to be a great superstar moving forward, I just hope previous bad booking doesn't stick, as it was never necessarily directed squarely at Roman Reigns in the first place.
 
#6 ·
Welcome to the forums :)

I do agree with you to be honest, the booking of the Rumble was atrocious, and people were getting booed left, right and centre as soon as Bryan got eliminated. Big Show and Kane eliminating everyone was terrible and made everyone look like trash.

However, the likes of Ambrose, Ziggler, Bray etc. were all getting reasonably good reactions in the match, even after the Bryan elimination. This makes me think that it really wasn't ALL about the booking of the match, and Bryan's elimination, I.E it wasn't Bryan or nothing. They were against Roman largely because it was painfully obvious he was winning. While DB's elimination heavily contributed to the fans turning on the match, i don't think Reigns would have received a good reaction anyway. From what i could see, they hated Roman's portrayal, and especially the fact that it was just starting to become clear that he was a favourite of Vince and co.

Reigns doesn't get the stick for who he is, he gets the stick for what he's put over to be.
 
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#14 ·
Welcome to the forums :)

I do agree with you to be honest, the booking of the Rumble was atrocious, and people were getting booed left, right and centre as soon as Bryan got eliminated. Big Show and Kane eliminating everyone was terrible and made everyone look like trash.

However, the likes of Ambrose, Ziggler, Bray etc. were all getting reasonably good reactions in the match, even after the Bryan elimination. This makes me think that it really wasn't ALL about the booking of the match, and Bryan's elimination, I.E it wasn't Bryan or nothing. They were against Roman largely because it was painfully obvious he was winning. While DB's elimination heavily contributed to the fans turning on the match, i don't think Reigns would have received a good reaction anyway. From what i could see, they hated Roman's portrayal, and especially the fact that it was just starting to become clear that he was a favourite of Vince and co.

Reigns doesn't get the stick for who he is, he gets the stick for what he's put over to be.
That's not because Bryan himself, but because he was seen as the only reasonable alternative to Roman. Me and my cousin often watch WWE together, and the only moment we felt that there could have been a swerve was when Bryan returned. As soon he was out, the winner was obvious.
 
#22 ·
Maybe people didn't hate Reigns completely before the Rumble, but they didn't love him either. He never had any momentum as a singles performer, nor was he ever white hot. Still isn't to this day, even with Vince doing everything humanly possible for him. Which leads to a big reason why he's booed:

He represents everything the fanbase hates about wrestling. Say what you want about the PG/Cena era and the money it made, etc.. Fans tired of it a LONG time ago. The top face being a corporate dope with no balls or personality is done to death now.

Never helped matters that Roman is a dreadful talker with little charisma and nothing special in the ring, either. He's simply a really shitty choice to be the top guy or receive the push that he did. The Rumble could have worked out okay with a different winner, and they could have kept Roman in the midcard where he belonged to see where he was on a quarterly basis, rather than trying to force him.

History has showed us time and time again that the next top guy needs to be something different than the previous one. So making your new top guy a poor mans John Cena, isn't going to be doing anything for the product as a whole.
 
#2 ·
Yeah, I've always seen him as a victim of Vince's crazy ideas and lack of patience by managment.

BTW Welcome aboard IronMan.
 
#3 ·
Blah blah blah crowd sick of Roman blah blah blah...

You do realize that only two days after that very Royal Rumble match which Roman won, the WWE network gained over 39% subscribers and put the Network subscriber count over million right?? Almost 59% of the gain was domestic as well.
 
#12 ·
Stop it. Compltely ignore that Brock Lesnar had a match , completely ignore that the company had to actually give Daniel Bryan a match vs Roman Reigns to see who ends up being the #1 contender . One thing to mention there was a free trial was given in February as well. Why give away soemthing if Reigns is bringing in new members? Also, when you mention that the subcribers went up, you're ignoring that those numbers were from December which was a free month. The numbers they released were always a month or 2 back, this was already confirmed a hundred times over. It's why they had a free month in February because the subscribers went up. But hey, lets not try to manipulate those numbers to suit your own claim and be dead wrong about it
 
#21 ·
Yes that is part of it. But there's also the fact that he just wasn't good. Great look, but not so great in the ring, miserable stamina, and atrocious on the mic. Take away his look, and you have arguably the worst male talent on the roster.

Getting him over momentarily was an impressive feat, but they will really have to "overcome the odds" to keep that going. John Cena is an extraordinary talent and athlete. But Roman Reigns, compared to his peers, is just a good looking guy.
 
#25 ·
Vince pushed Roman at the wrong time and Roman got caught in the crossfire. Roman worked his ass off this year to get the respect to end 2015 as champion
 
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