Roman Reigns

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[goc]

He is really, really good. I started the Microscope thread on him and it was another one of those big "the majority internet consensus is horribly wrong" moments for me. In a few years from now when he has more on his resume I could see him being a much better candidate. As it is I just don't think he has enough singles matches to really hang his hat on.

 

The Lesnar match is going to likely be remembered as an all time great, the Bryan match was great, The Big Show LMS match was really good and he has more good TV singles matches than you'd think. There just aren't that many of them. There are a ton of awesome matches as a part of The Shield but it feels like something that adds to a case for him instead of something you build one on.

[Phil Schneider]

He already has more great singles matches then someone like Micheal Hayes, and the Shield probably had as many great on tape matches as the Freebirds. He is still early in his career and I understand why people are hesitant, but there are going to be lots of guys on peoples ballots who haven't come close to his match output

[goc]

I don't disagree with what you said in the Nomination thread, he is a better candidate than a lot of people that have been nominated. I don't think he's actually a top 100 wrestler though. I strongly suspect he will be given the right opportunities.

[Jesse Ewiak]

He might be firmly on the list by time this is all done again in 2020.

[benjaminkicks]

MotYCs in 2012 (TLC), 2013 (vs. Rhodes Bros.), 2014 (Shield/Wyatts, Shield/Evolution), and 2015 (vs. Brock).

 

Add that to some other really good singles matches (vs. Orton, vs. Bryan, vs. Big Show) and his participation in so many awesome other Shield matches, and he's got a surprisingly good case, at least in terms of guys in the last 4 years.

 

He probably looks better than both of his Shield mates as far as WWE careers go, though they have the benefit of semi-significant pre-WWE career as well.

 

But this all depends on how much value you out in all this. Some would claim he's been carried in all of his good matches. I think that's silly, but I think I'll need to rewatch some of his stuff to figure out *how* good he really is.

 

And if he had pad the next 9 months with more great performances and matches, who knows where he can end up? But I think he needs to be taken serious as a candidate, if you put any value into modern work.

[Timbo Slice]

He's a better cleaner than Kenny Omega.

 

Again, this is all aesthetics here because Rollins and Ambrose are more dynamic workers and bumpers and sellers, but Reigns is more subtle than his contemporaries and it makes his bursts that much more explosive to me. He has plenty of strengths, and even though Joe is wont to throw out Takeshi Morishima as a comparison (when in his best matches he was carried, although he did add plenty), I'll be quick to say that Morishima's best match (Fight Without Honor vs. Danielson) isn't better than Brock/Reigns. You put the Top 25 Reigns matches, singles or tag, and I don't think Morishima's best 25 is there with him. Morishima's best tag match (Wild II vs. KENTA/Marufuji) wasn't better than Shield/Wyatts, and Reigns played a pivotal role in that match where people started realizing he wasn't just some brute and could actually work.

 

One thing I will say is that a lot of the issue with Morishima is that he was clearly someone people wanted more out of and didn't get whereas Reigns has pleasantly surprised people with how he's worked. That's going to get a lot more favor, obviously, but it doesn't change that Reigns has had better matches. Situation was definitely better than Morishima's, but outside of the Danielson stuff, I was unimpressed with his ROH run (Booking didn't help) and his top-flight NOAH stuff always fell flat for me. Reigns will get more opportunities than Morishima did, but I'll also say that Reigns has done way more than Morishima has done with the opportunities he's been given.

 

Neither of them will make my Top 100, but Reigns is someone that in five years might have a Cenaesque resume that can be pointed at as something where people realize just how good a worker he is even if there's a general consensus that he's not.

[GOTNW]

Reigns is good. I especially took a liking to him in early 2014 when he started throwing quality punches. I'd day he's undoubtedly the best of the former Shield guys right now. But I'm not nearly as high on the best Shield stuff as most seem to be to see him as a serious candidate and his singles resume obviusly lacks quantity.

[Danish Dynamite]

Don't see him anywhere near yet. I agree he might get there eventually, but I think he needs 8-10 years and not 5 to come near a "cenaesque" resume...

[BigBadMick]

Just one page for the Big Dog so far. I've a feeling he'll get plenty now...

Really great in-ring years in 2016-18, stumbled a bit coming back in 2019 but if August 2020 until now form  continues for a decent spell, he's a top 10 for me.

[NotJayTabb]

I've been rewatching the initial Shield run, and I'd say it takes no more than 5 months for Roman to be comfortably the best worker in the group, which is nuts when the other two were the indy vets designed to carry the workload. Even in 2014, which is the best year of Ambrose's career as a wrestler, Reigns is the clear star of the group, and he's kept developing since then. I could see him going top 50 for me

[Witlon]

 I need to do the legwork on the singles stuff, but he definitely feels like a lock, to the point where he made my initial nearlock list. He might have the best resume of any current era candidate male (Not counting the Indy guys like Hero/Bryan/etc.), with the Shield stuff and the myriad of great singles matches that I just need to cull together on the backend. Top 50 is definitely a strong possibility, but I'd lean about 95% on Top 75, at the very least. 

[Jmare007]

One of my goals to revisit in 2 years or so. I've always been a fan of him but never considered him for this sort of thing so I wanna go watch how high he can get.

[Boss Rock]

Reigns has been a very good wrestler for quite a few years now, but for some reason I've always been lower on him than most. Maybe it's because he was forced in to a babyface role which saw him have to work extended heat segments with boring heels like Corbin, Bray, or McIntyre. Or maybe it's because some of his biggest matches fall into the "multiple finisher kick-out" formula WWE has been relying on the last few years which I've really come to dislike. His best matches are pretty dang good though and it's been a while since I've seen most of the Shield tags, so I'd like to reevaluate.

[strobogo]

Reigns is really fucking good and has been since the start of his singles run with the Orton match at Summerslam 2014.. Been a lot of bitch eating crackers syndrome with him over the years as much of a reaction to the decade of Cena than Roman himself. Roman was the most over guy in Shield and was the guy the crowds wanted that run from the most so Vince gave it to them and then they got mad about it and it stayed that way for years. I think it's telling that literally every time Roman would be a bad ass or do something cool, they crowds would be 100% on his side (which usually happened with Cena as well). Dude has had some great matches with a pretty varied group of guys and styles from Orton to AJ/Bryan to Braun to Cena to Big Show to Brock to Rollins to Ambrose to Rusev and so on. I think he's unquestionably better than Cena in the ring (and Cena himself is a bit underrated) and was really hampered with some of the worst written promos for any top guy in any era for a lot of his run. 

 

That match with Braun where he had a bum arm and so he worked the entire match from entrance to exit doing everything differently and having to find new ways to weave in his big spots and moves is one of the best performances of the decade imo.

[Ed.]

I'm a high man on Reigns, and would of considered him on the bottom half of the list by virtue of The Shield run and him being one of the better workers in the company around 2016-18, but this current run with the title is really pushing him up my rankings.  The guy looks like a star and carries himself off as one, we're finally getting him in a title reign where he feels like he belongs and he's the top dog, and the matches have all delivered from the Jey Uso feud, to the Owens feud to his recent interactions with Bryan and Edge.  When you look at how shitty the former champions have been for the Universal title, Roman's run has put the belt back on track and it feels like the top prize in the company.  Roman's next 5 years excite me for how strong a GWE case he can make, certainly for rising up my list at least.  

I put very little stock in his mania bombs against Triple H and Undertaker, because realistically who's making those matches work other than Bryan, but there are low moments in his career which I do think he has to take his fair share of criticisms on, but I'll touch on that another time.

[Jmare007]

4 hours ago, Ed. said:

I'm a high man on Reigns, and would of considered him on the bottom half of the list by virtue of The Shield run and him being one of the better workers in the company around 2016-18, but this current run with the title is really pushing him up my rankings.  The guy looks like a star and carries himself off as one, we're finally getting him in a title reign where he feels like he belongs and he's the top dog, and the matches have all delivered from the Jey Uso feud, to the Owens feud to his recent interactions with Bryan and Edge.  When you look at how shitty the former champions have been for the Universal title, Roman's run has put the belt back on track and it feels like the top prize in the company.  Roman's next 5 years excite me for how strong a GWE case he can make, certainly for rising up my list at least.  

I put very little stock in his mania bombs against Triple H and Undertaker, because realistically who's making those matches work other than Bryan, but there are low moments in his career which I do think he has to take his fair share of criticisms on, but I'll touch on that another time.

I do too but I do think they put some sort of ceiling in how high he can get in a ballot. Specially the HHH match as the one with Taker I thought it was a "good enough" Roman performance and it was Taker who just couldn't hang that night. Then again, he's gonna get so much opportunities from now till the vote (if he wants to keep working/stays healthy) that those WM main events might just end up being seen as outliers were he was too young to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

[brockobama]

Very much of two minds about Roman. Absolutely would not have voted for him last time around but he won me over in a big way in 2017, slowly improving his case for me. Warts and all I believe he's been doing his best work during this endless title reign since the pandemic started, being that I'm relatively down on the Shield run. I think he's been one of the better wrestlers in the world these last few years but 1. it comes at a time when there's very little serious competition in my eyes and 2. has also produced some of the most discursive, disappointing wrestling we've ever seen. In terms of skill and quality matches, I think I'd easily find a place for him in the 90-100 range if not for the absolute muck so much of his career is mired in. We'll see how the next few years go I guess.

[KawadaSmile]

I think he was one of the best wrestlers in the world from 2015 until his leave of absece, just working great TV and PPV matches with an amazing variety of opponents. This history-making run he's having further consolidates his place among the top tier talent, as very few are able to generate such an atmosphere by just being there.

[Embrodak]

I think the only thing that hurts Roman is he can have kinda samey matches, but then he pulls out something like that Riddle match. He’s also one of my favorite Danielson opponents, which is something considering the career Dragon has had; those two have off the charts in-ring chemistry. I think he would have to go on the lower end of a fair list, he’s more of an overall package guy than an in-ring guy specifically, but he may be the exemplar of what it is possible to achieve as a worker having only worked in the WWE system. Bron Brekker has a lot to live up to.

[WingedEagle]

He has enough great matches, and in many cases truly all time great matches, against such a wide variety of opponents that I can't see him falling out of the top half of my list.

[Embrodak]

2 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

He has enough great matches, and in many cases truly all time great matches, against such a wide variety of opponents that I can't see him falling out of the top half of my list.

Really depends how you structure your list, I think, whether it's based on concrete achievement or on a perceived abstraction drawn from said achievements, or on a combo of the two. For example, Roman has had the benefit of being at the top of the card for a long time and having had a lot of thought and craft put into his matches by the most experienced and talented agents his company has. I'm sure he'd do well if you just plopped him down in a ring and told him to go, probably much better than a meticulous planner like a Kenny Omega, but I think there are probably a lot of wrestlers, historically and contemporarily, that could have done so better but don't have as many great matches to their name. After the obvious point that people disagree about the relative merits of various matches, I would imagine that where one sits in the concrete/abstract XY plane is a large source of variation in how individual lists get made; it's a big reason why Macho Man ranks highly on some lists and is low or absent on others, for example.

[Jmare007]

The Bloodline angle being such a huge hit has made Roman transition more to a "soap opera" type of wrestler but I think he does as good a job as anyone has ever done at that particular kind of performance. But I do believe his matches have suffered from it, I think the last legit great match I saw from him was the one against Cesaro (which I think is underrated, that match was fucking great).

While the others matches since then have delivered as spectacles and as part of a bigger story, I don't think they stand out as much as his prior work. It's an interesting scenario. The  hotter the angle got and his performance as the Tribal Chief got more iconic, the less impressed I've become with his ring work

[Reel]

I don't know if I necessarily agree that his matches have dipped, and I think the Cesaro match was actually one of his weaker singles matches of this run. I thought the Drew match was really good, the Sami match was very good, I liked the Cody match and I'm a low voter on Cody, the stuff with KO and Lesnar was strong. Really, I thought the Cesaro match, and the fact that nothing really came out of it for Cesaro, really hurt him in my eyes. He's one of the only guys who has worked with Roman in this run and came out on the other side in a worse spot. 

I think that Roman has certainly leaned more into being a character, and relies less on 'having a good match', but I don't think that has hurt his matches. To some degree, that old adage of 'we've already got their money' is true, and when you are over at that level some of that certainly takes over, but I think that it's more of a case where you can get away with doing less when people are invested than it is Roman being worse in-ring. 

[KawadaSmile]

Yup. Besides, he is able to get amazing reactions by doing less and less - just look at how him stacking the Usos up managed to get the crowd heated, and how he sold them kicking out.

While the matches indeed have slower paced early portions, he is still able to control the crowd masterfully through storytelling and reactions and character work. I think his Tribal Chief run is actually what solidifies him as a top tier worker in this generation, even. Him being a great in-ring wrestler in terms of workrate hasn't been in question since his 2014 match against Orton, but people really tricked themselves into booing him, thinking he sucked. He managed to get them on their side during his fantastic 2015-2017 run by busting out moves and bumps, and now he gets them to react the way he intends just by trash talking and gesturing. It's dope.

Also, I enjoyed the match he had against Rollins, and thought he had a small banger with Xavier Woods too, despite that turning out to be not really fruitful for either of them.