How Paul Heyman Fixed Roman Reigns
It is - genuinely and thrillingly - his yard now.
One of the problems with Roman Reigns, in an increasingly distant past, was that he never felt like his own man. He was always overshadowed by or compared unfavourably to somebody else.
He was the green muscle in the Shield who complemented that seminal unit perfectly, until we all realised that the unit existed for him, and not his critically acclaimed peers from the romanticised indies. Then, with his invincible trajectory to WrestleMania 31 and the dog sh*t promos he smeared on the road to it, he was the new John Cena when the old John Cena just wouldn't f*ck off. He was the Rock's uncool cousin who made the Rock less cool by association.
He beat everybody and developed little as an onscreen personality; walking out to the same Shield music, wearing the same Shield clobber and cutting the same entitled promos (sometimes with a "...bitch!" on the end!), Reigns defeated Bray Wyatt, the Undertaker, Braun Strowman and countless others in major programmes before falling, time and again, to Brock Lesnar. That WWE didn't even give you what you didn't want, for fear of you not wanting it, illustrated how far the company had removed itself from the pulse of the fandom. Reigns was emblematic of everything. He was the pet project so entitled that, in a wildly symbolic and counterproductive scene, he tried to take what wasn't his on the 'Mania 31 go-home show.
You all know the story, and you all, very loudly, hated it: Roman Reigns wrecked everything you liked about WWE, and wouldn't leave.
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