WWE WrestleMania 33: 5 Ways to Improve on Last Year’s Show
By Adam O'Brien
WWE.com
1. Stop Pretending That Roman Reigns is a Babyface
The WWE’s incessant need to book Roman Reigns as the company’s top babyface was arguably the most prevalent issue with last year’s WrestleMania.
The people of Dallas had to sit through a near-seven hour show. To expect 100,000+ fans to maintain their energy for that long is a tall order, regardless of how big or monumental the show may be, and the way they ended things certainly didn’t help.
The event saw a plethora of the WWE’s most beloved faces achieve varying levels of success throughout the night, but they opted to save its prime position on the line-up for the biggest failed project of the modern era; Roman Reigns.
Simply put, people hate this man.
The guy works hard, and he’s a terrific athlete, sure, but no amount of strength and power is going to make people love this guy if their natural instinct is to boo him.
The problem here is that the WWE has been ignoring the blatant rejection that a vast majority of the fan base has been throwing in his direction for well over two years.
Last year, the company had to mute a lot of its WrestleMania main event simply because the fans weren’t buying Roman Reigns as their hero. Reigns is no Daniel Bryan, and the main event of the single-biggest WrestleMania of all time went down the tubes because the WWE was too proud to admit they were wrong.
This year, thankfully, the seeds may already be planted for Reigns to embrace the villainous demeanor in which he belongs as he preps to challenge The Undertaker.
Whether he wins or loses in this affair, Roman needs to be the bad guy here for this to be a commendable outing – one that could easily be The Undertaker’s last dance.
Reigns has shown plenty of disrespect to “The Phenom” in his proclamation that the WWE ring is his yard now, and in his dismissal of WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels’ advice to get his head in the game ahead of WrestleMania. Should he continue down this dark path it could result in a much-needed shift in character that could completely change the way we look at Roman Reigns as a top WWE superstar.
Next: 5 Reasons Roman Reigns Will Win At WM33
Yet another big-time WrestleMania match will be determined by how the WWE chooses to book Roman Reigns this year, and if the company wants to learn from any of its mistakes from 2016’s spectacle, let it be this one.