If you watched Monday Night Raw this past week, you saw what was a promising development in the Roman Reigns-Brock Lesnar feud be completely stomped out by the WWE’s own cognitive dissonance.
Roman Reigns has a lot of potential. I’ve softened on my hate of his character and booking the past year because he actually has gotten a lot better at telling stories in the ring. They don’t always have a satisfying ending, but he’s gotten better.
Two weeks ago, Reigns cut an interesting and impressive promo (whose thunder was immediately stolen by Big E the following night) in which, he positioned himself as a company man who cared more about the fans that paid to attend the show and the audience watching at home than his own brand. While Brock Lesnar was never in house to rep what’s supposed to be the company’s most important title on the flagship show, Roman was there day in and day out trying to prove himself and win it so that the fans could get what they deserve.
Hey! That’s interesting! I like it! While it’s similar to the part-timer angle of John Cena’s feud with The Rock and then Roman’s feud with Cena, Reigns was going after Lesnar on a personal level that makes it unique to him, not just spewing out what so many have said before about Rock, Cena, and now Lesnar. Paul Heyman even did a good job of ramping it up the following week. At one point, Roman accosted Heyman for laying the title on the mat as a disrespectful act. It's a tiny detail but one that was consistent with the story they were trying to tell.
But then he had to go and ruin it.
On Monday night, Roman opened the show positioning himself as having to fight against the corporate structure of WWE that’s pushing Lesnar because he’s “Vince’s boy,” because Brock is what’s best for business.
The man who goes around telling people that he’s the “big dog” and that “this is his yard” is now trying to convince fans that, no, actually, he’s the underdog here. He’s the Stone Cold, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan figure that’s being held down.
This is so stupid.
Less than two years after his main roster debut, Roman Reigns participated in his first WWE championship match. From the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016, he held the championship three times. And all this happened despite the fact that it was clear that he wasn’t ready to hold the title. The front office saw a championship prototype and rather than craft a character that people could get behind, they strapped a rocket on him and he blew past fan favorites in a clear attempt to create the next big thing.
This has been evident to the company’s biggest fans since before he won his first title and yet this past Monday, the WWE expected everyone to either forget about that or pretend that it’s never been the case.
The entire WWE universe knows that the company has been setting up a Reigns-Lesnar championship match for this year’s Wrestlemania for a long time. It was always a foregone conclusion, it was just a matter of how we were going to get there.
And while many are disappointed that it’s not Braun Strowman, Finn Balor, or Seth Rollins, we might’ve been able to get behind the right story. And it was looking promising after two solid weeks of storytelling.
But now the WWE is just insulting our intelligence. And the biggest moment when that was made clear was when Vince McMahon said that Reigns would be suspended…
and the crowd started cheering.
