7 huge missed opportunities to turn Roman Reigns heel 

#5 Double turn with a monster

The stars were aligned, but WWE once made an idiotic decision.

It’s a rare instance when Vince McMahon's booking aligns in perfect coordination with the stars these days, and when it did, the WWE Universe got Braun Strowman. A product of the WWE performance centre, Strowman is one the very few superstars to have gotten over via WWE’s booking, as the pure intensity, badass persona and entertainingly destructive mannerisms of the “monster among men” truly resonated with fans who have been waiting for new blood to enter the main event scene.

And after bulldozing through jobbers, solid mid-carders and basically the entire Raw roster, WWE decided to pit him against the one man more protected than himself, Roman Reigns. After Reigns had speared the crap out of Braun on the Raw prior to the 2017 Royal Rumble, Strowman would retaliate in a vengeful manner by costing Reigns his chance to become Universal Champion at the event, and for those wondering the real reason why that angle with Strowman was set up, it was simple, Reigns couldn’t lose clean.

However, this storyline would surprisingly continue as Reigns would get a slight measure of revenge when he also cost Strowman his chance to become Universal Champion, and from there on out ensued a rivalry that would go down as one of the best in both men’s careers, as their matches, promos, crazy ambulance flipping stunts all felt refreshing in a stale WWE product that had been toned down for far too long.

But as in all Roman Reigns feuds, one thing was not clicking, his odd alignment as a babyface, and this time it was not just the crowd reactions that was tainting his squeaky clean record as a valiant hero, but it was himself. As WWE booked Reigns as a semi-heel throughout this whole fued, as crashing an ambulance with Strowman inside because he couldn't handle losing their Great Balls of Fire match clean and savagely breaking Strowman's already injured arm, were few instances of Reigns great work under a heel persona.

While many might jump to "the big dog's"defense saying that his heelish actions were all in retaliation for the misery Strowman put him though, the times Roman got to show off a more heelish persona was actually the best parts of this feud. Which brings this entire point to the conclusion that this was also one of those programmes WWE should have used a double turn, as Strowman was more over than anyone in the company as his antihero antics endeared itself to the WWE Universe and Roman was being hated no matter how sympathetic WWE tried to make him look.

And most would argue that at Great Balls of Fire when Roman tried to straight up kill Strowman by crashing that ambulance with him inside was in every sense of the word a heel turn, WWE didn't work with it and passed it off as Reigns be revengeful, but the company should have run with it. As Strowman walked away on his two feet looking like the biggest babyface in the world while Reigns jealously and anger over his loss made him feel like a heel that would blindsided his helpless opponent.