12 Ups And 15 Downs For WWE In 2016

7. Reigns’ Rumble Snooze

Roman Reigns Royal Rumble 2016
WWE.com

Last year started off with an ominous sign that we were in for a bumpy ride when Roman Reigns – freshly minted as a two-time world champion who finally was earning cheers from fans – managed to tank all goodwill at the first PPV of 2016.

At the Royal Rumble, Reigns was forced to defend his WWE World Heavyweight Championship in a true “one versus all” match, entering at #1 in the Rumble. Mid-match, Roman was attacked by the League of Nations and carted off on a stretcher, disappearing to the back from about #14 until he re-emerged at the very end to reenter the Rumble… to deafening boos.

Reigns essentially took a nap backstage for half of a match where he was supposed to be defending his world title “one versus all” style. He missed more than a dozen eliminations, including most of the Wyatt Family and Brock Lesnar.

Somehow, WWE thought this was the way to book its dominant babyface champion, and it backfired spectacularly. Fans cheered his elimination and he lost whatever momentum he previously had. Reigns spent the rest of 2016 having some good matches but still being booed just as much as (if not more than) he was cheered.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.