WWE: The Time Has Come For A Bobby Roode Heel Turn

By Trace Johnson | Jul 29, 2018

The WWE career of Bobby Roode has been a roller coaster ride of sorts with many highs, but also many lows as well and the lows have taken center stage as of late.

The Glorious One’s future in the WWE appeared to have no limits not long ago after a highly successful stint in NXT where he carved out one of the best characters over the past several years in the WWE. Fans were excited to see him on the main roster and they got their wish in mid-2017.

Roode made his main roster debut in August of last year and made a pretty big impact in a short amount of time. He would soon start feuding with Dolph Ziggler and as the new year began, Roode was in the thick of the United States Championship hunt.

An eight-man tournament was announced after Ziggler walked out and forfeited the U.S. Championship that would crown a new champion and the final round came down to Roode and Jinder Mahal. And on the January 16 edition of SmackDown, Roode knocked off Mahal to win the U.S. Championship, his first championship on the main roster.

His problems with Mahal would continue with Randy Orton entering the picture as well and Roode defended his title against Orton at Fastlane with The Viper capturing the U.S. Championship for the first time in his career. This ultimately led to a Fatal 4-Way match at WrestleMania 34 for the U.S. Championship featuring Orton, Roode, Mahal, and Rusev.

Mahal emerged victorious from that match and soon after, both Mahal and Roode would switch over to the Raw brand in the superstar shakeup with The Modern Day Maharaja losing the title to Jeff Hardy who took it over to SmackDown in the superstar shakeup. Some fans thought this was a bad move for Roode’s career and so far, that has rung true in about the most emphatic way possible.

More from WWE

Simply put, Roode has been anything but glorious on the red brand. He is just another face among an already crowded roster and nothing he has done in better than three months on the brand has stood out. It isn’t his fault, however, and nearly all of his misfortunes since joining the red brand are courtesy of his creative direction or lack thereof.

His direction and importance were beginning to lack after he lost the U.S. Championship to Orton at Fastlane and it has only diminished more since then. What made Roode glorious in the first place is gone and the WWE must make him glorious again. It’s not a hard concept to comprehend and many fans have been demanding the WWE to return him to his NXT routes.

There’s no other way around it, Roode has to turn heel sometime in the near future. At the rate he’s going now, he could fail to make it on the three-hour Raw as it is. That’s how bad his creative direction has been as of late. But the easy way to get him back on track would be to turn The Glorious One heel at long last.

It was fine to see him as a babyface on the main roster when he made his debut because his talent could make it work, but not forever. He’s been extremely stale for several months now and there are no signs of that changing unless a creative change is made. Roode became a fan favorite because of his heel work in NXT and emerged as one of the brand’s greatest ever.

Not to mention, he was a great heel in TNA in years past as well. His gimmick thrives in a braggadocios and cocky state and that is exactly what his gimmick has been lacking over the past several months. He has simply been a guy with a cool entrance as of late and that’s unacceptable for a superstar of Roode’s caliber.

Bouncing around in random matches with Baron Corbin, No Way Jose, and Mojo Rawley just doesn’t cut it, plain and simple. And to top it all off, he hasn’t even come out as the top superstar in those matches a lot of the time. Maybe the WWE is just setting things up for his heel turn, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

With how many superstars are on Raw, a heel version of Roode could feud with practically anybody. And given how there are many other superstars lacking direction on Monday nights along with Roode, turning him heel could kill two birds with one stone. Only time will tell what the WWE has in store for Roode, but it needs to start with a heel turn.

Related Story. Are Wins And Losses Meaningless Now?. light

The WWE is often criticized for its handling of NXT superstars once they make it to the main roster, and if management wants to avoid that criticism with The Glorious One, he needs to get back to what made him glorious in the first place.