8 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 11)
2. Stacking The Odds
Roman Reigns has had the odds stacked against him more than any other WWE champion, or so the announcers would have you believe. And even if thats true, is that necessarily a good thing? Reigns has had to overcome the odds just to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, but he also has had challenges trying to keep it. Mr. McMahon forced him to defend the title in a match last week in which he was the biased referee. At the Royal Rumble, hell defend the title again in the Rumble match itself. And Monday, Roman was pitted against the entire locker room (which ultimately amounted to 14 heels). The game worked well enough to get fans to rally to Reigns side, but WWE is walking a fine line regarding making Roman out to be a constant underdog. It can work against the champ and WWE. One of the things that has turned fans off to John Cena through the years is how hes put in these impossible situations and always manages to rise above the situation and triumph. And the odds got more and more over-the-top for Cena perhaps like defending your world title in the Royal Rumble and facing 14 bad guys by himself. This is not to say that hes being mishandled, but just that WWE needs to be conscious of this rather than just trying to create John Cena 2.0.
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.
