It’s hard to get everyone on the same page about WWE World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns. He’s “The Guy” no matter what, even if everyone hated his WrestleMania main event. Okay, not everyone. His dad liked it.
The conversation about whether Roman’s obvious upsides as a performer and abilities in the ring outweigh WWE’s incessant attempts to force us to love him (and how that relates to the John Cena “move forward no matter what the crowd does” model) happens every time Reigns is on TV. In an interview with Busted Open Radio, ECW legend and occasional WWE Dudley associate Tommy Dreamer spoke about why he considers himself a “Roman Reigns lover,” and how WWE would benefit from making Reigns a little more like Mike Tyson.
Here’s what he had to say, presumably while screaming and holding out his arms. H/T to 411 for the transcription:
“I’m a huge Roman Reigns supporter and I’ll tell you why. I watched – I was there live in Florida on a house show – him and Sheamus, and I cannot praise Sheamus enough for being a great heel. Everyone’s talking about, ‘Oh, Roman Reigns and the Wyatts pairing together,’ but you got to have great heels to actually work with that. Sheamus, Del Rio, and Rusev – who I’m big fans of, the bad guys. And, you think about it, the people are going to be on their feet for all of those matches. For the haters, to see AJ Styles win, and again, we work for the reactions and we work for people talking about it the next day.
I watched [Reigns] and Sheamus work about 25 minutes on a Sunday show and they had a WrestleMania match and the people were so into it. Right then and there, I was like, ‘That guy is pure money.’ I saw it live and I just watched it and I totally saw why he’s the man and he should be the man. But, guess what? We got Seth Rollins eventually going to come back, Randy Orton – you think of all these people who’re going to try to knock ‘the man’ off his perch.
I wish he went out there and talked like Mike Tyson, who couldn’t really cut a strong promo because of the way he actually spoke. You’d be like, ‘Oh, I could kick that man’s butt. Listen to how he talks,’ but yet Mike Tyson was the baddest man on the planet. If they kind of went that way with Roman Reigns – because when you think about it, we loved to hate Mike Tyson and then we just loved Mike Tyson. It’s an interesting time for the Roman Reigns lovers and haters. I’m a Roman Reigns lover.”
Now I’m picturing Mike Tyson knocking people out with Superman Punches.
What do you think? Would that work? Should Roman be the silent type who accepts that his promo skills are limited and use that to create a unique character, or should he keep pressing forward until we all get tired of complaining about it and come around? He’s already gotten much better since the beanstalk and magic beans days, after all.
