The Problem With WWE's 'Chosen One'
When Roman Reigns survived the last-minute onslaught of loathed fossils The Big Show and Kane and evil foreign menace Rusev to win the 2015 Royal Rumble, he was booed so mercilessly for it that most assumed this would actually be the end of his Road To WrestleMania rather than the beginning.
Conventional wrestling wisdom had it that this response (and f*cking loads others like it) would necessitate a change. But WWE hasn't mimicked conventional television wrestling company in any capacity for over two decades. Pushed so hard down everybody's throat that everybody got sick quicker than ever before, this wasn't the "mixed reactions" of the John Cena years or even a Shawn Michaels or Hulk Hogan getting booed in a heel town. The man was a figure of such disdain that reactions were still tempered when he returned from battling leukaemia in 2019. Audiences - in defiance of his outstanding range and quality work - dreaded him being atop the pile.
The person in that spot is supposed to be the one people want to see the most. WWE had gotten the basics backwards, and were so proficient at that that it became the norm.
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