If the Orlando crowd wasnt clear Sunday night, Roman Reigns as WWE World Heavyweight Champion was not a popular option, even less so would have been back-to-back Royal Rumble winner. Fans were on Reigns case from the get-go, and having AJ Styles debut at #3 didnt help. Then having Roman miss half the match by way of League of Nations beatdown made the crowd resent him even more when he returned triumphantly at #29 to run wild on the field. Fans clearly didnt want to see Reigns go coast-to-coast Sunday night, especially after he avoided facing the Wyatt Family, Brock Lesnar, Kevin Owens and a host of others during his absence. The audience cheered like mad when Triple H eliminated Roman, which is not the reaction you want when youre trying to build to a WrestleMania main event pitting evil corporate champion the Game versus underdog Reigns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFSi1Pv998E Despite their best efforts, WWE might need to wake up to reality that fans simply arent buying Roman as world champ. Period. Sure, Reigns got some good pops from crowds for a few weeks, and he certainly has his fans. But this is now two Rumbles in a row where Roman was largely booed, and it could easily be a second straight Mania where fans turn on him. If that happens, and Triple H is cheered by 100,000, then can we finally pull the plug on this experiment?
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.
