6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (15 Jun - Results & Review)
1. If You’re Gonna Be A Heel…
There is some deserved praise for what WWE served up with Roman Reigns and Jacob Fatu, but we have to address the elephant (no, not Nellie) in the room: Roman needs to fully embrace being a heel.
Currently, Reigns has been trying to have his cake and eat it too, basking in the cheers from fans and then cutting semi-heel promos while peppering in just enough positive language to keep the crowd on his side.
Manipulating an audience is part of the gig, and there’s always going to be that duality, otherwise, it would be difficult to see the Bloodline as anything more than a familial version of The Vision. However, WWE’s audience isn’t exactly the most responsive to nuance and subtleties. They love throwing their ones to the sky and chanting for the OTC and Yeet Man. But that doesn’t help WWE when they’re trying to paint the Bloodline as the villains and people like LA Knight and Cody Rhodes (and potentially Oba Femi) as counterweights.
They run the very real risk of fans not reacting strongly enough to the babyfaces and cheering both – or worse, reacting to the heroes with apathy because they have been conditioned to love and respect the Bloodline for years. Some fans also can be incredibly dense and simply want to do the sing-along and pantomimes rather than assess, though the Bloodline 2.0 could address that by halting those actions.
This was on full display during the Eric Andre beatdown, with fans blindly chanting “One more time” after Jacob Fatu splashed the actor, and then they erupted when Reigns relented and sent Fatu back in to destroy him. This was clearly supposed to be a manipulative heel move, but instead fans just blindly cheered because they saw more carnage.
Of course, this can continue to evolve, but there are clear signs that Roman isn’t about ready to be the full-time villain and wants to straddle the line a bit too much. It’s going to mute reactions, rendering stories ineffective.