10 Ways WWE Can Get Fans To Cheer Roman Reigns
Waitin' for a Superman.
Even typing out the letters R O M A N R E I G N S in May of 2018 inspires a soul-sapping sense of tedium. The character, as dead as Zack Ryder should by all rights be inside, is boring your writer absolutely sh*tless - and this is quite the Big Dog apologist.
Roman used to inspire some sort of reaction from the audience - usually deafening jeers, but a reaction nonetheless, one loud enough to convince WWE to convince themselves that Roman is a star. Perhaps the past tense is more appropriate; even in an age bearing little illuminating data, where TV ratings are compromised across the board and pay-per-view no longer exists in the WWE realm, you can still gauge the star power of a performer through their ability to not make a live audience p*ss off home in their droves. It is surely the end for the absurdly heroic and deeply unrelatable Reigns character which, in Bizarro WWE Land, means it isn't. He'll probably lose another Universal Title challenge at WrestleMania 35. There's always the ninth hour of WrestleMania 36, Sika!
Under his current guise, he is irredeemable - but there's still something there. Possibly.
Fear not, billionaire sports entertainment overlord Vince McMahon, for a man with no experience of what it takes to make a star is on hand...
10. Alter His Costume
In order to fully research this article, I've scrutinised very closely Roman's body of work, and I think - think - we're meant to infer that Reigns is some sort of Superman.
He uses a move called the Superman Punch. He overcomes evil quite a bit. He flies over the top rope with a plancha. He has his own eternal, all-powerful Lex Luthor in Brock Lesnar. He doesn't work for a newspaper, but he makes the headlines. Much like Clark Kent and his alter ego, Roman is indistinguishable from his early Shield persona to the crusader we see every week on RAW in 2018. Much like Superman, Roman does not possess human DNA but is instead completely alien to the audience. He doesn't have a love interest, but that's surely the next bullet point on Vinnie Mac's list. None of this is translating to the WWE Universe, who instead receive Roman as an over-produced and rudderless extension of Vince McMahon's ego. So, to make the implicit explicit, it's time WWE made this aspect of the Reigns character crystal clear by having him finally update his dated garb.
"They're not getting it, pal! Goddamnit, put him in a cape!"