How Good Was Babyface Roman Reigns Actually?

The babyface period of Roman Reigns’ career should not be given a revisionist history to make it seem as though it was better than it was. It was a fairly awful run in front of an audience who rejected him as the poster child for what Vince wanted his WWE to be. To indulge in “this era was good because…” rewrites would be to taint the incredible, generational work that the man himself has put in to go from this level of poor performance and immense, genuinely hateful public scrutiny to being not only the biggest WWE superstar of this era, but a man in the conversation to be the greatest WWE superstar of all time.

When Reigns is at the bottom of the 9th of his career, these years will matter, but not because of their quality. To come through the very worst years of McMahon’s creative, to be smeared in dog food and booed by stadiums of people in the main event of WrestleMania as a babyface? It would have buried lesser men. Hell, it would have buried nearly everybody but Roman Reigns.

If you had shown fans of this era footage of thousands of people all over the globe standing to attention and raising their hands to the sky in acknowledgment of Roman's greatness and undeniable aura now, they would never have believed it was real.

With the exception of his bitter feud with Seth Rollins, which proved to be his true undoing at WrestleMania 40, and building the foundations of his in-ring ability (which have also seen a massive improvement following this period), these years are best kept away from the lineage of the 'Tribal Chief's' story. When all is said and done, Roman will go down as one of the greats, but only a sliver of these years will make it into his greatest hits montage.

Of all the achievements Reigns has achieved and will go on to achieve, overcoming this period will always rank among his greatest accomplishments. Believe that.

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