10 Things WWE Realised Way Too Late

Whisper it quietly, but there are one or two rumours doing the rounds at the moment that WWE heads are at last thinking about pulling the plug on their ill-fated Roman Reigns experiment.

The evidence, to be fair, is quite compelling. While we're a long way from a fully-fledged heel turn, The Big Dog has now suffered back-to-back maulings at the hands of Brock Lesnar - despite going into WrestleMania season a couple of months ago the bookies' favourite to win the Universal Championship.

Then again, perhaps we're merely putting two and two together and getting five. It definitely makes sound business sense to cool Roman's push, but in Vince McMahon, we're talking about an incredibly stubborn decision-maker. He'd sooner lose millions than admit that he might have been wrong, as his desire to reboot XFL proves.

In fact, there are countless examples of the WWE board taking too long to wise up to something the fans had been screaming about the whole time, whether it be refusing to push an obvious star-in-waiting, continuing to invest in dead-end stars, or simply persisting with tired wrestling cliches.

Here are 10 examples.

How times change. A decade ago, we were criticising WWE for not paying enough attention to the indie scene. Now, some of us are getting mad at them for stealing all of their competition's best talent.

On the whole, though, this has to be a welcome change. However good the coaching down in OVW and FCW, the fact is that competing in thriving, independent wrestling promotions like Ring of Honor and PWG is a much better way to prepare for the bright lights of Raw and SmackDown.

The only downside is that it should have happened a lot sooner. WWE picked up CM Punk in 2005, but they also could have taken Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe and Nigel McGuinness right around the same time, saving us from drab and repetitive match pairings we were served up at the tail-end of the Ruthless Aggression Era.

Sometimes you can't see what's right under your nose though. It took Punk and, eventually, Bryan going in there and becoming the most popular guys in the company for Vince and co to realise those internet nerds might have a point.