MONDAY NIGHT REIGNS-O-METER #63: Tracking Roman Reigns’s ability to beat the odds and come out on top

Roman Reigns is one of the most divisive and talked about WWE performers in history. The company makes desperate play after desperate play to make him their number one star – with limited success. How do they do it? What do they do?

I’m Tom Colohue and this is the Monday Night Reigns-o-Meter.

Monday Night Reigns-o-Meter

What is Roman Reigns? Face or heel? Who knows? Who cares?

In a recent interview Roman seemed surprised to be asked a question about turning heel, answering only that he thought he was a heel already. This has been my opinion for a while but if ever there was a perfect example of how Roman is used, this feud with Jinder Mahal is it.

You see, being a heel isn’t just about playing the bully, acting tough and dismissing the intense skill set of AJ Styles. It’s not just ‘retiring’ the most beloved wrestling icon in the world. It’s not just crashing someone’s wedding celebration and shoving the bride’s face into cake, shooing away Sami Zayn’s attempt to become a title contender or entering a Royal Rumble that he should never have been in. It’s everything that Roman Reigns is.

You can not deny that Roman Reigns is smug. Would you argue with the word entitled? Maybe a little whiny? How about refusing to believe that he lost a match even though he did in fact lose it? These are all traditional heel traits.

I’m going to go a little further though. Roman Reigns is the perfect top talent for this generation. Let me go a little further into why.

The night after Wrestlemania 33 started with a TV intro that celebrated the career of The Undertaker. They cut to the arena, where thousands upon thousands were chanting ‘Thank you ‘Taker’.

Then, a miracle happened! Almost every single one of those fans organically chose to reject positivity in favour of hatred and bile. Long before Roman Reigns entered that arena proper the fans had chosen to voice their hatred and completely abandon their support of The Undertaker; one of the biggest names that pro wrestling has ever had.

It’s no longer about fans choosing to cheer someone and booing people that work against those people. It’s now about fans choosing to boo someone and loving people that work against them.

This has been proven again and again. It’s literally the formula for the Royal Rumble now. Roman Reigns comes second in order to guarantee a big pop for the eventual winner. Reigns gets set up in impossible situations so that you expect him to win and go crazy for the guy who eventually beats him. That’s the whole point of this here Reignsometer.

Add in the naturally contradictory nature of the modern fan too. Would Daniel Bryan have become as big as he is if not for the idea that the company didn’t believe in him? After his loss at Wrestlemania in only seconds support didn’t come quickly but it did come. The truly magnificent thing is how many people talk about Bryan, listing everything the company couldn’t see and then two weeks before the Summerslam in which Bryan beat Cena you have Triple H on TV saying those exact things to Brad Maddox.

Want a more modern example? Dolph Ziggler went from face to heel and his popularity soared. He’d had a great face push and upon turning heel fans cheered him far more than they booed him, chanting ‘one more time’ as he served up cheap shots and chair shots to younger up and comers. How about Shinsuke Nakamura? More popular now than ever before.

On the other side, The Miz fights a constant battle to stay hated. Kevin Owens literally tries to start ‘Thank you Roman’ chants because if he doesn’t the fans start cheering him.

Add those things together and you have an audience who wants to hate and also be contradictory. So their ideal top talent is someone they’re told to love, surely?

The idea of a McMahon chosen one has always been something vocally rejected by WWE fans. The first three title reigns of The Rock were under his corporate champion persona, where he raised the corporate eyebrow and dropped the corporate elbow. Even the night before he first won the title The Rock had been one of the most popular men in the company but that chosen one persona made him.

But here’s the thing, you don’t need to be the chosen one on TV any more. In fact, you shouldn’t because of the contradictory nature of fandom. Kevin Owens is a chosen one and he has to work hard to be a heel. Seth Rollins’ run as the chosen one was mostly on the back of his feud with Ambrose but Randy Orton was a chosen one at the same time and fans were eager to cheer him well before his actual change in arc at Wrestlemania 31.

Instead, you have a chosen one behind the scenes in the most openly acknowledged secret in WWE history. Fans feel in the know. They feel like they know something other fans don’t. They feel like they have to stop Roman Reigns from being the top guy.

And so we come to Jinder Mahal. Every complaint that fans have about Roman Reigns is also true of Jinder Mahal, at some points magnified considerably. Jinder was pushed straight to the top from the bottom. Jinder main evented PPV after PPV after PPV for no merit of his. His wrestling talent was extremely limited at the time. He was the one the company chose.

And yet WWE knew that Roman Reigns would be the one fans chose to hate. Why? Because Mahal is the one they should hate.

Last week Roman repeatedly assaulted Mahal, fighting dirty and attacking from behind at one point. A lot of people seem to think this is to get Roman cheered. I see it differently.

The Jinder Mahal experiment is not over. Those one point three billion fans in India are still fans that Vince McMahon wants. How does he get them? Well, how about putting Jinder Mahal, their supposed relatable hero, in a feud with Roman Reigns? In a feud with the most hated man in the company. In a feud where he is the underdog being attacked from behind. They’ll be running that highlight package, where Mahal gets attacked from behind and cheered when he’s able to put up a fight, for months.

Sure, they rebalanced this week, but let’s be fair, if WWE actually book Roman as a baby face proper they might actually turn him into one. Just enough good guy to make him a bad guy and just enough bad guy to build the next generation? Sounds like the top guy to me.

Odds Counter
– Kevin Owens
– Jinder Mahal
– A steel chair

Did Roman Reigns beat the odds?
No

But there’s always next week.

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NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: MONDAY NIGHT REIGNS-O-METER #62: Tracking Roman Reigns’s ability to beat the odds and come out on top