10 WWE Angles That Backfired Spectacularly

Generally speaking, stacking the odds against the good guy is a sensible way to encourage the audience to root for them. They've done this in pretty much every superhero or action movie in history, and it usually pays off.

Wrestling fans, however, are a little more cynical than most. They don't want to be fed a formulaic storyline, especially not when the beneficiary of it is a man they've already made it very clear they aren't exactly in love with.

That's why the Roman Reigns versus The Authority angle - which dominated Raw from late 2015 all the way up until WrestleMania 32 - was so ill-conceived. WWE heads effectively set The Big Dog up for failure by making everything so grimly predictable.

Worse still, they don't appear to have learned any lessons from it. To this day, Roman continues to monopolise the main event and the reaction of the fans continues to be largely ignored. How much more evidence do we need that this doesn't end well?