While it would seem that Roman Reigns clearly isn’t getting any fan love, it’s surprising that WWE seems to be clearly ignoring this fact altogether and continuing to push him full steam ahead. If Reigns wins the title at WM31 and walks away without being cashed in on it will further cement the fact that the WWE is sticking with Reigns despite fan angst. So why would the WWE continue on with Reigns if it’s not popular. The answer is simple, the WWE continues to twist perception into a scenario that works for what they are trying to do.
There have been numerous examples of this. When Lesnar wasn’t around to defend the title because of his contract the WWE justified it by saying that the title should only be defended as an attraction flying in the face of the title being defended almost monthly for nearly 20 years. The WWE is PG rated, but their Total Divas show is anything but. WWE claims that’s aimed at a different audience, but uses their PG show to promote it.
Yet no other twist of perception was greater than the WWE’s treatment of John Cena for his run as a baby face. About 66% of the crowd was against John Cena. Instead of flipping Cena heel the WWE decided that it was financially better to keep him face and just state that these days fans can cheer for who they want. There are no more true heels or villains. Fans can pick their guy and ignore the masses.
This theory was probably supported by the fact that Cena was selling tons of merchandise for the company and seemed to be the only guy that could move the needle as far as ratings went. That being said the Cena run hasn’t been an epic ratings success. He was a massively successful figure head for them, but never came close to Stone Cold Steve Austin in a lot of areas.
The WWE is applying the same theory to Reigns. Any reaction is good reaction. That’s why in the face of pure fan rejection Reigns is getting the massive company support. They have protected him like no other prized superstar of the past. The WWE are thinking that Reigns will sell merchandise to that same 34% demographic and the rest of the crowd will tune in to root against him. They will continue to push him as the main company baby face in spite of the fact that he gets a majority of jeers.
The WWE simply believes that Reigns is more marketable than any other full time talent on their roster. They will continue to fleece Cena for what they can, but Reigns is there guy. The more fans boo the more they will push him in the same way. They live under the rationale that heels and faces don’t exist anymore. That crowd reaction positive or negative is a good thing as long as it’s loud.
The fact of the matter is the WWE has simply dropped the ball on the Reigns push. There are many pundits out there that have tried to pick up the slack for Reigns, but he’s already falling so far flat that WWE barely lets him cut promos. The numbers for Raw the past five weeks going into their best time of year have steadily declined. If that trend continues the WWE will abandon ship, but they will not do so quickly.
Many fans feel by booing Reigns they are actually helping to wreck his push, but instead they are feeding into it. The only real way to stop Reigns is by changing the channel and canceling the network. This is not a column in support of either one of those behaviors. There are tons of reasons to watch WWE product outside of Reigns, but just like the Cena era, if fans continue to tune in and subscriptions continue to climb then the WWE is not going to make any distract changes to their product or direction until financially they become impaired.
Ric Flair was recently featured on the 30 for 30 with about Duke Blue Devil Christian Laettner. He commented that the way to make something really epic is to have a great hero and villain. He was suggesting that you can have the two best teams competing for something and it will be good, but if you put hero’s and villians against each other it becomes epic.
The WWE is embracing an idea that it doesn’t matter if there are heros and villians. There are instead just guys. As long as they continue to hold on to that belief in spite of the fans they will only be a good company producing good content, but nothing epic. It truly is a sad reality.