The Roman Reigns experiment continues, well into his second WWE World Heavyweight Championship run. Vince McMahon returned to set him up against WWE’s most important villain, they got the formerly hostile Philadelphia crowd to cheer a title win, and now he’s getting thrown out of the building like Stone Cold Steve Austin. So, is he Stone Cold yet? Is it working?
Let’s ask the man who knows Stone Cold Steve Austin better than anybody.
In a blog posted on his website, Hall of Fame WWE play-by-play man Jim Ross — who, again, is still alive — compared to the two, noting that Roman should probably stop trying to be the new version of an old thing, and be the first version of a new one. A much quieter new one.
“Even though I’m not predicting it, Reigns suddenly aligning himself with The Authority would be a massive shocker and cast an entire new, long lasting light on the WWE Champion who needs to adopt the ‘Dirty Harry’ philosophy of speaking less and not more. Roman doesn’t need to be a Stone Cold or Rock remake but instead allow his natural personality to be put on display, organically. Reigns was great on the WWE2K video game symposium simply being himself. I’d suggest trying that plus Roman becoming more invested in the creation of his own verbiage.”
So, you’re saying “sufferin’ succotash,” calling everybody “son” and cutting promos about magic beans and tater tots isn’t Roman being himself?
I don’t think you need to be a Hall of Fame announcer to know that Roman would be helped tremendously by a little less is more, and by learning how to speak on a microphone as himself to seem more like a human. The Usos have the same problem. A lot of people in WWE have that problem, if we’re being honest.
How do you fix that? How do you teach a promotion full of wrestlers taught “look here, say this, sound like this,” to be themselves and “create their own verbiage?”
