When 2015 started, it looked like this was going to be Roman Reigns breakout year. WWE was going to get behind the second-generation star with everything in its power to turn him into a megastar. He started out by winning the Royal Rumble, sending him to the main event of WrestleMania: Play Button for a title match against Brock Lesnar. Then the wheels fell off the bus. Fan rejection of Reigns (heightened by the return of perennial fan favorite Daniel Bryan) resulted in WWE pulling an escape hatch by having Money in the Bank briefcase holder Seth Rollins cash in during the title bout and win the world title. Reigns push was derailed, but it looked like he would get back on track a few months later by winning MITB himself. And then WWE decided to throw a wrench in the works again by having Bray Wyatt interfere, sending Roman into a months-long feud with Wyatt instead of pursuing the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. Then, just when it looked like he was finally going to reach the mountaintop at Survivor Series, WWE pulled the rug out from under him again by having Sheamus cash in his MITB briefcase and end Reigns title reign. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk_ZTPh_Do Now, it appears that WWE has finally decided to get behind Roman, fans be damned and surprisingly, fans are actually responding decently to him. However, Reigns spending much of 2015 being a modern-day Lex Luger and trying to turn him into a John Cena-lite instead of being the a**-kicker who got over in the first play is just too big of a sin to overlook.
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.
