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Roman Reigns’ WWE Suspension Makes Heel Turn Inevitable

By Brandon Carney

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Roman Reigns’ suspension gives him an edge that makes a heel turn necessary.

Right next to Finn Balor’s debut, Roman Reigns’ heel turn has very much become the Loch Ness Monster of WWE. People swear they’re seeing signs of it all the time, they want it to be real so bad, but we’re ultimately disappointed every time. We’ve gone over what WWE has done wrong with Reigns so many times, but to sum it up, they want him to be their next Cena, the fans aren’t having it, and WWE doesn’t care and is doing what they want anyway. But thanks to Reigns’ 30-day suspension for his violation of the Wellness Policy, things may finally have to change out of necessity if nothing else.

I’m not suggesting WWE should use Reigns’ suspension as some fuel to make him a heel; that would be awful and would certainly end up winning the award for Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s “Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic of the Year”. No. Rather, Reigns’ suspension is going to necessitate an eventual heel turn because the crowd finally has a reason to dislike him that management will have to respect.

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People hate Reigns because he was pushed to the moon without getting over naturally. If we’re being honest with ourselves, he’s a very solid wrestler and his mic skills, although they’re not great, are mostly diminished because of the awful material he’s been provided with. When the fans boo him, WWE has the confidence in his abilities to fall back on, so they can say “Whatever, he’s our guy and we know he’s good. They’ll get over it.” Now, the fans have some legit fuel to their fire that WWE will not be able to just gloss over.

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Reigns’ character is based so much around being an obnoxiously nice guy. I don’t mean he’s going around helping old ladies cross the street all the time, but he deals with the crowd booing him and still stays true to who he is. He’s supposed to be a noble guy who fights for what he believes in. The only reason he’s been able to stick to this character is because he has a squeaky clean track record. He never cheats, never takes the easy way out, nothing. The suspension changes that.

This is a blatantly-wrong thing to do and it compromises the integrity of Reigns’ babyface persona. There’s no way to just “ignore” this since WWE has acknowledged the suspension everywhere but on TV, which could still happen this Monday on Raw. So how will Reigns handle this while still staying babyface? Well, I don’t think he can.

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He seemingly has two options for how to deal with this suspension. The first is to do what I said WWE shouldn’t do, which is use the suspension heat to turn him heel. Although it would be messed up, it wouldn’t be beyond WWE to do something like that.

Option two is more likely, and it involves Reigns sincerely apologizing to the WWE Universe. He would come out and say he did something wrong and that’s not who he is. The problem is that fans have booed him for so long that this isn’t going to change anything, and the people still against him are going to point out the suspension for a long, long time.

Reigns isn’t going to be able to escape the suspension talk, and the only logical step is for him to turn heel because of it. Before this, a lot of fans disliked him. Now they have a concrete, irrefutable reason to dislike him. Couple that with the rise of Dean Ambrose and the continuing fan support of Seth Rollins and Reigns is destined to turn heel in the near future.

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The clean, Cena-esque persona WWE wanted Reigns to have is gone for good. Because of that, his long-rumored heel turn isn’t just a pipe dream anymore, it has become a necessity.

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