Why Roman Reigns doesn’t deserve the hate

My first wrestling piece for this new blog and I’m already bracing for the hate. But having being on the side of fans who despise Roman Reigns with a passion, I began to question why it was continuing and I’ve now convinced myself that Roman Reigns is a worthy John Cena Jr.

Why? *Borrows (Steals) catchphrase from Simon Miller* Here’s why!

At the time of me writing this Roman Reigns, the person we all fell in love with during his time in the Shield, is currently received worse by the majority of WWE live crowds (Not to mention on the internet) than the jobber who was sky-rocketed to the top, Jinder Mahal. It was this fact that made me finally turn a corner and begin to question exactly why we were all booing the Samoan Cena.

When Reigns debuted in the Shield, as the bunch of Indy-loving, heel supporters that we are, we immediately took the group to heart (Reigns included, despite his lack of Indy scene experience). For the entire run of the Shield, all 3 members were massively over with the crowd. Whether they were being booed as heels, or cheered as faces, they were over in a good way. Then Seth broke off on his own and everything started to go downhill for Reigns.

I have no doubt that the ludicrous scripts the WWE gave him whilst pushing him to the moon did him no favours, but we know that Reigns is better than that and we never pin bad scripts on other wrestlers, we pin the blame where it belongs, creative. Furthermore, whilst Reigns was delivering  ridiculous promos, we were calling for Reigns to be turned into his badass version, for him to come out, say little and just kick ass. So what did WWE do? They did exactly that. But the heat never stopped coming, no one stopped to say “Hey, they actually did what we asked, why are still booing him?”. What’s more important than that MASSIVE fact though, is the fact that Reigns is always putting on great matches. Yes, it takes two to tango as they say, but Reigns has shown he can have a great match with nearly anyone and as of right now his programs have by and large been the best things about Raw for quite some time. So why was Roman proving the exception to the rule?

The answer is pretty simple, he was being pushed at the wrong time. He was being pushed at the time when Daniel Bryan was hitting fever pitch levels of support.

Had Roman Reigns been pushed the following year, had he been allowed to step aside for 12 months to give Daniel Bryan his Rumble win and subsequent win at Mania then I truly believe that by now Reigns would be the solidified top-guy in the company (Because as much as we would have wanted Bryan to maintain that run, no one would place the blame on Reigns for what happened to Bryan’s health).

So just take a step back the next time you’re about to boo Roman Reigns. He may not have spent 6 years travelling the Indy scene before arriving in the WWE, but he paid more dues during his time in the Shield than many other wrestlers have paid before hitting the top (Looking at you Jinder).

But that’s just one Mark’s opinion. Let me know what you think via social media @MitchKAdams and be sure to stick around as I write up the many blog ideas I have backlogged.