Roman Reigns, the guy with the biggest pecs, isn’t very well liked by a lot of adult wrestling fans. People inside the wrestling business have nothing but nice things to say about the guy, but the gorgeous, perfect prince with the impeccable pedigree still gets showered with thunderous boos everywhere he goes. Luckily, we have intelligent experts like Kurt Angle to tell us what exactly WWE has done wrong during the Roman Reigns Experiment.
During an appearance on The Statement Show (the show that now includes statements), Angle was asked for his opinions on Reigns. Because he has been around the business a long time and understands how wrestling works, Angle had nothing but praise for Reigns and thinks the fans will come around on him eventually, but he believes he’s cracked the code on why everyone hates him SO passionately.
“Roman Reigns is talented. I don’t care what anyone says. You can’t deny that the kid knows how to work. I believe what happened to him was that they didn’t have him go through the ringer. They didn’t have him win the European title, or I should say, the Intercontinental title, U.S. title, King Of The Ring [tournament]. They just threw him up there right away and the fans don’t like that. They want you to earn your keep. If any wrestler has ever done that, I don’t know of one. It seemed like they were really trying to push Roman faster than he should have been pushed. I think he will earn the respect of fans, but it’s going to take a little bit more time.
“For Vince McMahon, it’s not a difficult choice. You keep Roman Reigns in the picture and you just continue to push him. And eventually, someday, it won’t be the half and half, 50 and 50 [where] 50 [percent of the crowd] like him and 50 don’t. Eventually, it’ll go up, 60, 70 percent.”
This is, of course, pretty in keeping with the main criticism you hear about Reigns: WWE “shoving him down fans’ throats,” and him getting constant title shots/reigns and main events without having “earned” them. Is it as simple as him not going through the cycle of becoming a secondary champion for a while first? Would we all love his guts if he’d feuded with King Barrett over the Intercontinental Championship for eight months before moving to the main event?
I guess we’ll never know. It would just be nice to fast-forward to a year from now (or whatever) when everyone has finally realized Roman is great, and treats him accordingly.
(h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription)
