10 Most Improved Wrestlers On The Planet Today
7. Roman Reigns
Roman Reigns was deployed with the utmost care in the early stages of his main roster run; protected in six man tags with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, he quickly and powerfully picked apart the carcasses ferociously battered by his fellow Hounds.
There was a reason for this: Reigns, despite a lengthy stint in developmental, was still fairly green in singles bouts - so much so that he only had two on Pay Per View before his date with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 31.
One of these matches, despite its **** Wrestling Observer Newsletter rating, was the paint by numbers affair contested with Randy Orton at SummerSlam 2014. The other was a marked improvement - but Daniel Bryan, at that point in his career, could've dragged the Great Khali to a watchable match.
Expectations were fairly low for his subsequent series with The Big Show - especially when it was patently designed to inexplicably develop the self-styled Big Dog's underdog character.
Their Last Man Standing match at Extreme Rules 2015 was inconceivably good - and his 23:03 Hell In A Cell match with Bray Wyatt was even better. Reigns had learned - with some brevity - how to engage an audience in a singles epic.
Reigns had improved to such an extent that he was even on the receiving end of unanimous cheers by the close of TLC, before the unfortunate placement of the more popular Dean Ambrose as both Royal Rumble runner-up and Roadblock fodder for Triple H just reinforced the idea that WWE were tone deaf in their cloying approach to Reigns' push.