Overpushed Roman Reigns

[Lawrey12]

Has there ever been anyone pushed harder against the tide than Roman Reigns?

Hogan was pushed hard but at least he could cut a promo.
I can’t see the fascination the WWE has with the Big Dog. He’s awful in the ring, has no charisma, and his finishers are probably the worst combination in wrestling history.

When The Rock couldn’t get over as a generic babyface they turned him heel and got him over as hot as they’ve ever got anyone over. However with Roman, they keep jamming him down fans’ throats as a face despite several years worth of disdain.

The man has the same winning percentage in WWF/WWE as The Undertaker. What on earth is going on here?

[jakecronus8]

Roman is a very good wrestler with good charisma and a good look who can’t memorize and sell scripted promos. Yes he’s pushed too hard but to say he’s not a good wrestler/talent is objectively wrong

[improper]

I don't really have issues with Roman the wrestler. I have issues with the tone deaf manner in which he's been pushed for literally half a decade now. They need to finally cut their losses and turn him heel and give him a chance to develop an actual character, because they are just not going to be able to get him over as a face and there are five years of evidence to back that up. The only heels he can get cheered against are guys like Corbin who no one takes remotely seriously. Any heel the fans actually respect is going to be the face in a feud with Roman.

I think he's also a garbage promo, but then again that could just be him getting bad material and not being good enough to overcome it like guys such as Jericho and Owens can do. I've long thought the right move was to have Heyman turn on Lesnar and become Reigns' hype man.

[jakecronus8]

One thing Roman has going for him now is that the automatic heat has transferred from him to Rollins.

[Spens1]

He genuinly is the most overpushed wrestler of all time relative to his talent level. He's not a bad wrestler (not great but you can put him there for 15 minutes and get a good brawl) but there is not much else to him, he's got a great look and is generally charismatic (carries himself well, has a presence etc) but he is bottom tier on the mic (there genuinly isn't a wrestler off the top of my head who is worse on the mic than him besides Ricochet).

WWE forgot their own formula, you first have them turn heel and learn to work the crowd before you turn them face, every succesful face in the company, from Hogan (who was heel), Bret, Shawn, Stone Cold, Rock and even Cena (who honestly, besides Roman, is the worst face of the company by far as he was the face who presided in the adult audience dissappearing and being replaced by children who got tired of him and moved on from the product in a few years) all where heels before they turned face.

The biggest mistake WWE made was turning Seth on the shield, they should have had Roman turn and have Triple H as his mouthpiece (a stable of HHH, Cena, Roman and maybe Nikki Bella as a chosen one stable back in 2015 would have worked really well).

[Dr Positivity]

Reigns has had the title like 2 months in the last 3 and a half years. It's not exactly HHH's reign of terror. I have never seen Reigns as overpushed as Rollins in 2019. They basically gave Rollins the biggest push of all time with a Royal Rumble win, beating Brock clean twice at Wm and SS, etc. This after years of being an IC title/tag team guy

As for why they like Reigns so much, Reigns is one of the few guys on the roster that can make a match PPV levels of important without a belt or stipulation being involved. In other words for such a seemingly middling promo, he's one of the best at developing feuds. He has had PPV main events with guys like Joe and Braun with nothing on the line, they put him with Lashley and it felt like a big-ish match (and they burned their annual roster brawl card on it), etc. Take nearly anyone else and make them spend like 8 months feuding Elias, McIntyre, Shane, Rowan and Corbin and they're going to sink but he managed to stay afloat being fed Vince's turd sandwich. He is one of the best wrestlers on the roster no matter what the smarks say, his % of matches that the crowd gets into has to be one of the best of anyone's.

It's Big Dog's yard. Oooaaa.

[LLJ]

Reigns has had the title like 2 months in the last 3 and a half years. It's not exactly HHH's reign of terror. I have never seen Reigns as overpushed as Rollins in 2019. They basically gave Rollins the biggest push of all time with a Royal Rumble win, beating Brock clean twice at Wm and SS, etc. This after years of being an IC title/tag team guy

As for why they like Reigns so much, Reigns is one of the few guys on the roster that can make a match PPV levels of important without a belt or stipulation being involved. In other words for such a seemingly middling promo, he's one of the best at developing feuds. He has had PPV main events with guys like Joe and Braun with nothing on the line, they put him with Lashley and it felt like a big-ish match (and they burned their annual roster brawl card on it), etc. Take nearly anyone else and make them spend like 8 months feuding Elias, McIntyre, Shane, Rowan and Corbin and they're going to sink but he managed to stay afloat being fed Vince's turd sandwich. He is one of the best wrestlers on the roster no matter what the smarks say, his % of matches that the crowd gets into has to be one of the best of anyone's.

It's Big Dog's yard. Oooaaa.

Part of this is due to the fact that Roman's reputation precedes him. The WWE still treat him as important whether he's in the midcard or main event, and thus, the fans still see him as a big deal. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Roman's performance in particular.

However, he IS an underrated match worker and does seem to get the crowds interested in his matches. There are a lot of overpushed people who don't have the same knack.

[Dr Positivity]

Part of this is due to the fact that Roman's reputation precedes him. The WWE still treat him as important whether he's in the midcard or main event, and thus, the fans still see him as a big deal. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Roman's performance in particular.

Maybe. But Orton for example is a big name, and he still is stuck in the mid card more often than not. And what makes Reigns a bigger name than other multi time champions like Rollins or AJ for example... They're all in the A list. Is he a bigger name or does he just have more inherent star power?

But other than being a fan of Reigns, some of my opinion is also coloured by one of my favorite wrestling pet theories I've had the last few years, that the hardest thing to do is to have a feud that isn't over a title, especially if it culminates in a match without a stipulation. At that point all you have left is ability to make people interested in the characters and storylines. The majority of wrestlers including virtually all women's wrestling need their feuds be propped up by a belt (I was impressed by somehow Lacey vs Natalya ended up being enough of a feud to go last woman standing, so I have my eye on Lacey in that division atm), so there really aren't that many to take conclusions from. When I first started tracking my little theory the two trends that jumped out to me the most were that Reigns looked good and Corbin looked bad. In 2017 Reigns main evented Wrestlemania with Undertaker, he had a match at No Mercy with John Cena that was nearly as big as Braun vs Brock for the title, and he had his major Braun feud with matches at Fast Lane, main evented Payback, then ambulance match at Great Balls of Fire. Meanwhile Corbin for years has been the guy they would put in no one cares feuds with Zayn, Nakamura, Balor, etc. And the best way to compare the two, look at what happened when Corbin feuded Cena, the guy Reigns took to a major No Mercy match months later. They had an irrelevant Summerslam feud that went 1st, and Cena later himself buried in his promo (I will say in his defense though, I think Corbin has improved from 2 years ago)

The guy who looks surprisingly good by my theory? Bobby Lashley, who has pulled together some storylines with Reigns, Braun and Rusev the last year and a half. The only problem is he's 43, so the ship may have sailed (side note, I was watching Survivor Series 2005 a few weeks ago and couldn't believe that Lashley was 14 years younger in it, he looked almost identical, while someone like Batista has aged a lifetime since then. Black don't crack.)

[improper]

However, he IS an underrated match worker and does seem to get the crowds interested in his matches. There are a lot of overpushed people who don't have the same knack.

The main issue is that he gets people invested in his matches in the wrong way. He's pushed as the face every time but the crowd more often than not boos the sh*t out of him and cheers the heel. If they'd just turn him heel already, they could get out ahead of it and put him in a position to actually succeed. Instead, the crowd is just going to turn on him again when he inevitably main events another Wrestlemania and probably goes over the Fiend in what may turn into an outright crowd revolt.

Note: I don't blame Roman for any of this. I think he's a little bland in the ring because he really only does about five or six actual wrestling moves, but it's not his fault Vince has a huge hard on for him.

[LLJ]

However, he IS an underrated match worker and does seem to get the crowds interested in his matches. There are a lot of overpushed people who don't have the same knack.

The main issue is that he gets people invested in his matches in the wrong way. He's pushed as the face every time but the crowd more often than not boos the sh*t out of him and cheers the heel. If they'd just turn him heel already, they could get out ahead of it and put him in a position to actually succeed. Instead, the crowd is just going to turn on him again when he inevitably main events another Wrestlemania and probably goes over the Fiend in what may turn into an outright crowd revolt.

Note: I don't blame Roman for any of this. I think he's a little bland in the ring because he really only does about five or six actual wrestling moves, but it's not his fault Vince has a huge hard on for him.

I don't think anyone in the company is an elite worker except for Bryan now and even Bryan mostly sticks to about 5 moves now. But his greatness is that he knows how to pace his matches out to maximize every move. The biggest myth is that the WWE has some of the best workers in the world right now and I just don't think that's true, or at least a lot of the more highly rated ones aren't as good as people say. AJ would be second after Bryan. but I feel like he's lost a few steps since 2016, his matches have more dead spots than before now. But Roman's a little better at selling fatigue and drama than Rollins is, that's why Rollins' main events have almost rarely hold crowds' attention after they have witnessed 3+ hours of wrestling on PPVs.