Roman Reigns is one of the top guys in WWE, even though the most vocal fans around tend to heap hatred upon him. He sells a lot of merchandise, and he has allegedly never met a hater in real life. For months (arguably for years), fans have pleaded with WWE to finally give him a heel turn … so they can be okay with liking him.
Yes, that statement involves a sort of strange, circular logic, but that’s wrestling in a nutshell: someone gets so good at being a bad guy, that there’s no choice to make him into a good guy. And vice versa. Reigns has definitely been playing up the fact that fans loathe him in the build-up to his WrestleMania match against The Undertaker, and his entry at No. 30 in this year’s Royal Rumble match was basically the key to getting fans to cheer when Randy Orton won.
WWE knows exactly how fans feel about Roman Reigns, and it’s possible that not overtly making him a heel is serving to make him more of a heel. Ah, see, there’s that circular logic again! Triple H tends to agree with that line of thought, and in a new interview with Sports Illustrated, he laid it all out: Reigns is already a heel; he’s just a heel being presented in a different way.
“People can look at Roman Reigns and say, ‘The failed attempt that is Roman Reigns,’ but Roman Reigns sells tickets,” said Levesque. “Roman Reigns gets one of the loudest reactions every night, whether that reaction is a boo or whether that reaction is a cheer. The fans who say, ‘I don’t understand why they don’t turn Roman Reigns heel!’ Isn’t he already?
“If you believe what you believe, and you’re saying, ‘How can they not turn him heel? There is 70 percent of the crowd booing him out of the building!’ If that’s your belief, then isn’t he already the biggest heel we have? If 70 percent of that crowd is booing him, then he’s a heel. We’re just presenting him to you in a different way that makes you hate him.”
It makes sense. It all makes sense. Unless this is just a way for WWE to have their Roman Reigns cake and eat him, too. It’s hard to blame them, either way.
