Why Some Just Don't Like Roman Reigns

[JN]

Roman Reigns is clearly a controversial topic these days. There's some that feel he is nowhere near ready for this monster push and some feel he's just a victim of horrible booking. Lately though, I've been noticing things in interviews and out of character pieces that just entirely rub me the wrong way of the guy.

"Fans have to realize that as opinionated as they are and the way you want it, the company is the same way and they are gonna do what they wanna do...hopefully, at the end of the day, I'm the one getting rich."

Two days before the Royal Rumble on the Sam Roberts show.

Everybody is a critic. Every critic I’ve ever had, they weren’t wrestlers [laughs]. Every wrestler I’ve ever had critique me, they were always into my stuff or what I’m doing out there. For a non-wrestler, someone who doesn’t even know how to lock up, and if we did lock up, they wouldn’t know what to do, for them to critique any of us, it really does pop me.

Interview on Crave Online

Unless this guy is becoming a mega heel, which more than likely isn't the case...comments like this just ooze an over-privileged douche. Sure, there's the obvious shots on the guy that his move set is incredibly green, his delivery with written out promos has been a swing and a miss and his work rate is nowhere near up to par than his peers...but it's comments like this that really make it hard to get on board the Reigns train. The funny thing is, I love how his response to critics is "well, you're not a wrestler...you can't truly criticize me." That's like a musician saying "Well, I'm a musician and my music friends like what I do...so you can't criticize my music." Maybe it's just me, but guys like Ryback...Ziggler...Bryan...and even Cena come across as much more passionate and convincing about having a top spot.

I may not now how to cook, but I know what bad food tastes like. To me, Roman Reigns is McDonalds. It's easy, it's cheap and it can really make you sick to your stomach after it's being force fed to you.

[Mark613]

A fantastic article, somewhat related:
camelclutchblog.com/wwe-creative-needs-an-overhaul/

There has been absolutely nothing organic about Reigns' rise. That is my problem with him being in the spot he is in. The Shield's fan response felt organic, Ambrose and Rollins solo-work too. Reigns has seemed manufactured from day 1 of his solo-run, and fans have started to wise-up to the machine. Changes are needed.

[rinaldo]

Reigns is nothing like he was in the Shield. He was the brooding big badass dude with the cool moves that would fit with the rest of Ambrose and Rollins' repertoire.

Now he's just some one related to the Samoans who's starting to believe (DAT!) his own shit.

[deezy]

So he said he will listen to the guys he knows he can learn from and pay no attention to people who don't know the job.

How is that controversial? If I was a carpenter, I would listen to the journeyman with his red seal, and not the guy who watches Holmes on Homes every week.

It's a joke how people who doesn't know the ins and outs of that job to act like they know what a guy should be doing.

[JN]

Jan 28, 2015 14:38:15 GMT -5 deezy said:

So he said he will listen to the guys he knows he can learn from and pay no attention to people who don't know the job.

How is that controversial? If I was a carpenter, I would listen to the journeyman with his red seal, and not the guy who watches Holmes on Homes every week.

It's a joke how people who doesn't know the ins and outs of that job to act like they know what a guy should be doing.

Sorry but if you're being positioned as the "new face" of the company, suggesting that you hope that you 'get rich' while telling fans to shut the fuck up and take it essentially is pretty controversial and just reeks of real life heel. To me, this is the real Roman Reigns. Not the lines that are fed to him. There's always a difference in between knowing being confident in your work compared to critics like John Cena usually takes it and being smug about. I know I'm not alone in being turned off by this.

As a consumer of the WWE product, we're allowed to criticize what we see as someone's "work ethic" and fans are now more than ever able to detect what a guy's weaknesses and strengths are. If a guy usually seems like they have a winning attitude and seems genuine, fans are more accepting of someone's work. Sure, not everyone should have a similar style and is going to hit every button with every audience member...but if you honestly fail to see the golden boy like attitude in these comments, clearly we still just have completely different opinions.

[daltonimperial]

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Reigns, including this one. Those comments don't mesh with the cleancut babyface WWE is trying to present him as and don't make me want to go buy a Reigns shirt or anything.

But are these statements that different from someone like CM Punk? If I told Punk he sucked at doing the GTS and believed too much of his own hype, he'd ignore me just like Reigns says he ignores non-wrestlers. Wasn't part of Punk's points in the Colt Cabana podcast, "Yeah, I made millions, but I should have made ten million"? Would he have walked out had he been getting top level money even if he wasn't main eventing Wrestlemania? Did Punk listen to anyone, wrestler or not?

This type of attitude isn't out of the ordinary in wrestling. Didn't Nash repeatedly say something along the lines of "it's a work" and justify doing as little as possible for the most amount of money, regardless of what the fans wanted? Or, say, the contrast between Hulkamania and the real-life Hogan who politicked and manipulated things to keep himself strong, get his buddies in power, and undercut any competition? Or the company's current COO (or whatever position HHH has), who made friends with the strongest faction in the company and married the boss's daughter? Lots of top guys (whether they are booked as faces or heels) are not nice, whether in wrestling or politics or business.

It sucks, but that may just be his perspective. If this is the true Reigns, then he is being criticized for saying the truth and criticized for trying to do WWE's fake good guy promos. Do you just want people who pander to the crowd like Ziggler, who sometimes is more focused on getting a reaction from the crowd than playing his face role (e.g. being HEELZiggler on Twitter even while a face and being more focused on entertaining the fans than winning matches)?

Jake, would you "like" him as a heel if he basically played Batista?  Would you enjoy booing him and give him heel heat if he were aligned as a heel (his "true" self?) instead of this babyface?

[Zekey]

I was listening to the Sam Roberts W podcast earlier today. With a response like "they've never wrestled" he just doesn't get it. That doesn't mean he won't it just means he's green. I wanna cheer for this guy tho. He seems really cool. When he says he hopefully will be getting rich I can relate to that. I'd like to see THIS personality turned up to 10 on TV. I think he'd be a perfect heel. The way to get over in WWE is to win the crowd over with what you do as a heel. It happened with Rocky, Austin and Cena. It may be backwards but its worked.

[daryl]

I've always found the whole "You don't do what I do so you can't criticize me" logic to be laughable. By that same logic am I not allowed to praise the triple threat match and talk about how good it was because I've never wrestled?

Having said that I think the main reason people dislike Reigns are the bad scripted promos, which aren't entirely his fault. I think his emergency surgery came at a really bad time for him and the company bringing him back to cut these monotone, passionless via satellite promos did him no favours. If he's going to be away you have to give the crowd time to miss him, and he probably should be on the house show loop cutting promos to work on his craft while he's still out of action.

They've completely mishandled Reigns since his return. Whether it was reciting nursery rhymes or comparing himself to Superman (complete with monotone sound effects) and turning him into a Samoan John Cena when people would rather see the strong, silent badass Reigns that was in the shield, who said very little but what he did say was impactful.

I think if you had a friend who acted like Reigns a year ago, you would think he was a really cool guy. Now if that same friend acted like Reigns today you would think something was wrong with him. The fans just want their old friend back.

[deezy]

CM Punk would berate fans as he was supposed to be this big babyface. Either be consistent with this stuff or just admit the Reigns hate stems from WWE thinking they know better than you.

[JN]

Jan 28, 2015 16:44:12 GMT -5 daltonimperial said:

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Reigns, including this one. Those comments don't mesh with the cleancut babyface WWE is trying to present him as and don't make me want to go buy a Reigns shirt or anything.

But are these statements that different from someone like CM Punk? If I told Punk he sucked at doing the GTS and believed too much of his own hype, he'd ignore me just like Reigns says he ignores non-wrestlers. Wasn't part of Punk's points in the Colt Cabana podcast, "Yeah, I made millions, but I should have made ten million"? Would he have walked out had he been getting top level money even if he wasn't main eventing Wrestlemania? Did Punk listen to anyone, wrestler or not?

This type of attitude isn't out of the ordinary in wrestling. Didn't Nash repeatedly say something along the lines of "it's a work" and justify doing as little as possible for the most amount of money, regardless of what the fans wanted? Or, say, the contrast between Hulkamania and the real-life Hogan who politicked and manipulated things to keep himself strong, get his buddies in power, and undercut any competition? Or the company's current COO (or whatever position HHH has), who made friends with the strongest faction in the company and married the boss's daughter? Lots of top guys (whether they are booked as faces or heels) are not nice, whether in wrestling or politics or business.

It sucks, but that may just be his perspective. If this is the true Reigns, then he is being criticized for saying the truth and criticized for trying to do WWE's fake good guy promos. Do you just want people who pander to the crowd like Ziggler, who sometimes is more focused on getting a reaction from the crowd than playing his face role (e.g. being HEELZiggler on Twitter even while a face and being more focused on entertaining the fans than winning matches)?

Jake, would you "like" him as a heel if he basically played Batista?  Would you enjoy booing him and give him heel heat if he were aligned as a heel (his "true" self?) instead of this babyface?

You're totally correct in saying that politicking isn't necessarily new to the business and guys certainly have a history of making the business work best for them as opposed to working what's best for the business...but I think there's something to be said about someone like Roman Reigns who people are already pretty sour on and then to be giving responses like this. I don't know him, but how are we as wrestling consumer supposed to buy into the character they're portraying when he's doing interviews like this. That's not to say that guys aren't just in it for the money, Hulk Hogan became a fantastic heel by saying all of "Hulkamania" was just for the money. We bought into it, because we all kind of believed it was probably was for him at times. Brock Lesnar is a mean, evil heel who you BELIEVE in the idea that he's just here for the money and to hurt people.

I think in Ziggler's case, his account name was created when he was a heel...yes? I don't necessarily see the pandering to the crowd overshadowing Dolph's face role. Not sure where i've seen that in his matches. And honestly, maybe a heel turn would benefit Reigns at this point. If you're going to be the golden boy with a silver spoon in your mouth and the "Authority's" future....(much like Seth Rollins is in storyline) than act the part. Again, it worked for Hollywood and Lesnar I'm sure cause it's natural.

[TolerancEJ]

To look at the other side of the current WrestleMania main event match, I'm not sure Brock Lesnar is enough of a ring general. I don't think he could successfully lead Roman Reigns through a match. Brock is on a per-appearance contract and will not spend extra time going over the match beforehand with Reigns. Two WrestleMania's ago, Lesnar accidentally whacked his head and Triple H carried him for the rest of the match.

[deezy]

Everybody is a Booker nowadays, they all set themselves up for disappointment no matter what they did.

Brock and Reigns will be fine, they have Heyman and no doubt all the to guys to lay this match out. It will be a showcase of both guys.

As for if the character he plays isn't what he is in real life? No shit, it's a character. People who say they are smart to the business really can buy into kayfabe when it suits their interests. I've never heard anyone who ever worked with him say anything wrong, even the almighty himself CM Punk didn't say anything negative about him other than him being a chosen one.

This reminds me of the "Cena holds people down" allegations without a shred of credibility.

[RKing85]

a small positive, or at least something that I see as a positive.

Roman Reigns will be the first WWE champion under the age of 30 in over 5 years (since Randy Orton in 2009)

[Deleted]

He's a big guy that fits the look like a Batista, but he has a wrestling family like Orton. He'll be around for the next 20 years. Get used to it. He'll be the guy squashing Ziggler week after week while Daniel Bryan is stuck in a feud with Kane for years.

[JN]

Jan 29, 2015 10:00:31 GMT -5 @ryanryder said:

He's a big guy that fits the look like a Batista, but he has a wrestling family like Orton. He'll be around for the next 20 years. Get used to it. He'll be the guy squashing Ziggler week after week while Daniel Bryan is stuck in a feud with Kane for years.

Nah, he won't last that long.

I see him burning out in at least 5 to 7 years from WWE shining a light on him too quickly. Like Court Bauer alluded to on the latest episode of Bauer and Pollock, this feels very much like a Chris Masters situation. Someone with a look the company drooled over that got hoisted into the spotlight too quickly and got his weaknesses exposed by the audience.