The Roman Reigns project has been Vince McMahon’s top priority for almost three years. Since the fall of 2014, he has tried to get Reigns over with the audience over and over again, but to no avail. He was wildly popular while part of the Shield, and prior to his return from an emergency hernia operation, he got a pretty good reaction.
But as soon as the audience realised that Reigns, like Cena before him, was the next pet project that would be shoehorned into the top spot with the entire WWE machine behind him, they revolted in a major way. Since the 2015 Royal Rumble, Reigns has been a heat magnet the likes of which hasn’t been seen in years, if not longer.
Despite being cast as a heroic babyface, a very vocal segment of the audience rejects his chivalric behaviour and good guy mentality at every opportunity.
But Vince McMahon has remained adamant (or stubborn, depending on your point of view) that Reigns is still popular despite the vocal condemnation of everything he does. They’ve tried to change fan perception by making the Samoan connection to the Rock. That idea failed.
They tried to make him into a John Cena-style talker with catchphrases and a sense of humour. That approach failed even more.
They tried to make him an underdog like Daniel Bryan trying to overcome the odds. That strategy wasn’t even believable from day one. They’ve even tried to pair him with popular legends of the past, hoping that the nostalgic effect will somehow translate into support for Reigns. That hope was wildly misplaced.
It seems that Vince McMahon has tried everything to get Reigns over with the audience, and all possibilities have failed. The only way, it seems, to get Reigns over with the audience is for him to do the one thing that Vince apparently will never allow: to have Reigns turn heel.
Many, many, MANY people have argued that Roman Reigns should become a full, proper heel to get over with the audience. The reasoning for this is that Reigns appears to be miscast in his role as smiling babyface.
Everything from his mannerisms, promo style, and even his facial structure isn’t befitting a John Cena-esque superhero. Reigns was at his best when he was the silent powerhouse of the Shield, and even recently, he has gotten slightly better reactions when his promos were either minimal or nonexistent.
But Vince apparently will not pull the trigger. He’ll keep Reigns as Cena’s replacement as top babyface; fan reaction be damned. However, there’s another way to get Reigns over with the audience: involve Vince McMahon himself.
Despite all the criticism he gets, Vince McMahon still gets a major reaction whenever he appears on-screen. No matter what his alignment might be, he gets cheers from many people by the simple virtue of being the chairman of WWE. This isn’t just limited to the live audience; the ratings always seem to increase whenever Vince is scheduled to appear.
Simply put, Vince himself is good for business for WWE.
Now imagine what it would look like if WWE went down a hybrid of good guy and bad guy by putting Reigns with the Chairman, himself. The promos themselves would be incredible. You’d have Vince selling Reigns to the fans on a weekly basis.
Every time they’re on screen together, Vince would tell the audience about Reigns’ assets and positive qualities, and the fans would boo in response.
To prove his point, Vince would book Reigns to beat every true babyface in the company, one by one. This would keep going until Reigns is at the very top of the WWE and becomes world champion.
Once this is achieved, Reigns would begin to question his spot at the top. Vince would argue that he was the one that got Reigns to that spot, having sold him to the audience for months. Reigns, meanwhile, would argue that he got there through his own hard work and talent.
This argument would set the stage for a Vince McMahon betrayal that would, essentially, turn Reigns back babyface. If Vince were to betray him, Reigns would become a true hero fighting against the evil boss that had used him to achieve his own desires, like he had done previously with so many others.
Vince would cut promos saying that Reigns is as disposable and replaceable as any of his previous handpicked champions. He could then argue that wrestlers come and go, but only he [Vince McMahon] stays the same.
Reigns would then set his sights on Vince McMahon, thus beginning an extended feud during which Vince’s evil would contrast Reign’s heroic behaviour. If this all looks familiar to you, it’s because this strategy was used before…and worked to perfection.
Rocky Maivia was where Roman Reigns is now: a clean-cut, heavily-pushed babyface that smiled a lot. His promos were very basic, his in-ring abilities equally so, and his character virtually non-existent. Yet despite all of this, he was pushed into a very prominent position…and the fans booed him relentlessly for it.
At the time, Rocky was a throwback to the generic, never-show-any-negative-qualities good guys of the 1980s. But those characters couldn’t survive in the 1990s, especially with complex and morally ambiguous characters like ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, the Undertaker, and Mankind.
But Vince still wanted to make a star out of Rocky, so he did the only thing he could do: turned him heel, changed his character, and sold the Rock as the best thing in WWE.
Over time, that worked, and the Rock’s stock in WWE grew by leaps and bounds until he reached a point that he was such a big star that he didn’t need Vince anymore. Vince, in turn, betrayed the Rock and tried to ruin his life just like he had tried to ruin Austin’s.
In doing so, the once-hated Rock had become a beloved babyface, simply out of his opposition to the despicable Vince McMahon.
Right now, Reigns is one of the very few top WWE Superstars to have never had his own heel singles run. Sure, he was a heel of sorts as part of the Shield, but that trio could hardly be considered true heels, given how quickly they got over with the audience.
If you look at all of WWE’s top stars of the past and present, almost every single one of them had some experience as a heel. John Cena, Steve Austin, The Rock, Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, Bray Wyatt, Triple H, Randy Orton, Kurt Angle, even the Undertaker, were all heels at one point in their respective careers.
It was through this negative alignment that they learned about character depth and were able to show a different side of themselves.
If a character is perpetually a babyface and doesn’t show any evolution or adaptability over time, they become stale and boring. Reigns fits this description perfectly. He’s suffering from a crippling case of repetitiveness and staleness, all because his character has not evolved or shown any depth in over a year.
At this point, the only way he could do that would be if he abandoned everything he has been doing and to join Vince McMahon.
Reigns could benefit from this kind of alignment in a major way. Vince can do all of Reigns’ talking for him, thus concealing one of Reigns’ noted weaknesses. He’d still be in a position of prominence by sheer virtue of his affiliation with Vince.
And of course, there would exist a very simple yet enjoyable storyline to tell involving Reigns benefitting from being in Vince’s company on TV, only for him to later outgrow the need for McMahon, or for him to realise that the boss is only using him. In either circumstance, Reigns being managed by Vince McMahon, only to be betrayed at a later date, would make perfect sense to develop the Reigns character.
Sure, the fans would boo him at first for playing the role of a corporate sellout, but in doing so, they’d be booing the character and storyline because of its execution and message, not because of their legitimate dislike for both a wrestling character and the man portraying him.
Besides, some people would love to boo him so much they’d cheer him out of sheer contrarian desire, and upon Vince’s betrayal, the turn would make him a true babyface.
So everyone wins in this scenario…if only Vince McMahon himself were to realise it.
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