10 Wrestlers Too Big To Fail (That Failed Anyway)
7. Roman Reigns (WWE: 2012-2020)
Vince McMahon spent the best part of five years projecting Roman Reigns as his company's all-conquering, money-drawing babyface centrepiece, creating one of the most vitriolic fan backlashes in wrestling history.
Cynical pundits pegged Reigns as the Shield member McMahon was most likely to push (rather than Dean Ambrose or Seth Rollins, both of whom appealed more to modern "workrate" fans' sensibilities) after the group's inevitable split. So it transpired, with McMahon and Reigns swimming against an irrepressible tide of negativity at the top of the card, worsening a toxic relationship with WWE's audience that almost certainly contributed to the chronic viewership slide.
The Raw on which The Shield split drew 4.27 million viewers. Today, the show doesn't even pull half of that.
So damaging was McMahon's dedication to keeping his head stuck in the sand that pockets of fans started turning on Reigns within months of his return from a life-threatening second battle with leukaemia in 2019. When that happened, it appeared nothing could save Roman's stock with the audience.
Until August 2020, when WWE finally pulled the trigger on the heel turn that may have stopped this from becoming a problem in the first place. The Head of the Table is great - and one of the best things on current WWE programming.
Why did it take so long to get here?