6 Problems That Led to WWE Ratings Decline
By Carl Gac
WWE.com
Roman Reigns
Another massive thing that is so hard to boil down to its biggest problem.
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Right from his debut as part of The Shield, Roman Reigns was the man who was obviously Vince’s choice to be the next big baby face of the company. Several of his peers have noted that he had to look strong during matches. It was never him who was pinned or submitted during Shield matches and the hot tag was almost always built towards him coming in to make an impact. Since the Shield broke up it’s been hard to protect Reigns quite as much but by God have they done their best to make him look good.
They tried to push him into the top spot by giving him the win in the Royal Rumble, at a time when all the crowd wanted was for Daniel Bryan to win, but he got booed out of the building. He did achieve one thing, he managed to get the WWE Universe to boo while The Rock was in the ring, something you never thought could happen, that was impressive. It was a godsend when Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank case at WrestleMania to stop Reigns getting his hands on the gold.
Since then he’s got the better of everyone he’s faced in the ring, including most recently winning the WWE Championship at Survivor Series in the tournament final, thankfully he got beaten by another Money in the Bank holder in Sheamus and only had the belt for just over 5 minutes. If he walked away with the title, it would only have led to the sight of the man who’s meant to be your figure-head getting booed at every occasion, at a time when he’s meant to be so over that the crowd loves him.
The need to build up a new man to be the top babyface is understandable as well as how we’re expected to accept Reigns as the man to replace John Cena. What I will never understand is the way it’s being done. Pushing him as the man who can’t be beaten, no matter what the odds are against him will never get him over with the crowd. If anything that will just turn them against him that bit more. Trying to get him sympathy by adding his friends, Ambrose and the Usos, into his battles won’t work. You ever heard of too little, too late?
The WWE Universe already has an opinion of Reigns and it’ll take a lot to change those opinions. Right now the best thing they could do would be to turn him heel and let those boos actually begin to mean something.
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