WWE desperately wants to get Roman Reigns over with fans. Matching him up with smark favorite A.J. Styles is probably not the way to do it.
It’s hard to imagine what creative is thinking, honestly. Because not only is it Styles on the other side of the ring from Reigns for this Sunday’s Extreme Rules WWE Network live event, but his comrades from The Bullet Club, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson.
Fans of The Bullet Club from their New Japan days, and they are legion, are never going to come around on Reigns, the third and least appealing option from The Shield, behind Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose.
It’s almost as if creative is either trying to bury Reigns as a face, or … maybe setting up what seems to be the inevitable heel turn?
Rollins is due back full time next month, but it’s not hard to imagine that he’d be available Sunday night for a run-in.
If you were to go that route, how would you handle that Rollins run-in to impact Reigns? The obvious would be to have Rollins interfere to balance out the numbers following a run-in from The Club, and in the process give some rub from Rollins to Reigns.
The way WWE would most likely process a Rollins intervention in Reigns-Styles would be to have Rollins side with Styles, then have Reigns overcome the insurmountable odds to pull out the victory, but in the process transferring the heat from Styles to Rollins to set up a Shield Showdown at SummerSlam.
Which would be nice, but you’d be doing so with Reigns as an unpopular babyface, and Rollins as a super-hot heel.
This we could call Cena Booking. WWE hasn’t cared about whether John Cena is cheered or booed in years; he is booked as the top face when he’s healthy either way.
Reigns is clearly being groomed to take over the Cena role; fortunately for unfortunately for WWE, Reigns, like Cena, has as many, or more, fans as he has haters, which is interesting for your top babyface, but … whatever.
As long as the fans keep buying tickets, right?
Column by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
