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Lol. They were chanting holy shit because Undertaker showed up unannounced. They were booing Roman as a heel in the angle, not the idea of Roman vs Taker. If you watched that segment and thought it was the fans rejecting the idea of Roman having a match with Taker, WWE might have passed you by. Holy shit chants had absolutely nothing to do with Braun in that segment. Anyone that thinks Taker/Roman hasn't been intentionally set for Roman to get booed since the Rumble is blinded by Roman hatred from two years ago. You were supposed to boo when Roman eliminated Taker. You were supposed to boo when Roman talked about his yard for the past month. You were supposed to boo when he got in Taker's face. And you were supposed to cheer when Taker chokeslammed him. All the reactions the crowds have given.

 

Right before Roman came out, they had the monster heel on Raw come out and say the local Chicago crowd hates him, which obviously was going to get pops for Braun and extra boos for Roman. This is so basic that anyone that posts on a wrestling message board not seeing it is bordering on inconceivable in 2017.

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I never said or suggested that Roman isn't the heel vs Taker, or that he wouldn't get booed here. Of course he would. But just because they've decided to lean into the boos for this Taker thing doesn't negate the fact that they're still trying to push him as a top face and crowds still fucking hate it. I may be a casual observer at this point but I'm not making up the boos. They're there. People do not like him. Trying to paint his neverending push as some kind of Vince genius masterplan instead of hubris is just as dense an idea as anything you're accusing me of.

 

It's just almost comical, if anything, the way that they tease the crowd with something new and exciting, only to swerve and give them Roman again all along. Build up Braun Strowman as an unstoppable monster, get him over...only for Roman to be the one to beat him. Have Taker come out to face Braun and tease that match...only to have him BACK AWAY and have Roman come out instead. Gotcha.

 

Roman is basically like a Twitter avatar, one that Vince hides behind to troll his audience with for the lulz. Someone just brought up the idea of trolling the smarks above, and it's a question we should be asking at some point, whether it's worth it. At some point the booking of Roman went from "we'll just keep pushing and pushing him until they like him" to "we'll just keep pushing and pushing him because even if they keep booing it's pretty funny". I'm not sure how successful (or mature) a promoting strategy that is. Cena thrived and drew as a polarising babyface, I'm not sure how much Roman is doing the same - it's been a long time since I've paid attention to WWE business minutiae, but last I heard Roman, while getting many more cheers at house shows, isn't much of a draw. Maybe things have changed since then, I don't know, I'd be happy to be set straight. But as it stands you're left with a guy who WWE wants as their top babyface star (using him as the heel vs Taker notwithstanding) whom crowds consistently and vehemently reject in that position. He gets booed now as a matter of course (it has long since reached the Cena "cool thing to do" stage) but it's those moments where they try to position him where they want him that the fans REALLY hate. Whenever they set something up for Roman to make the save, whenever they give Roman another title match, whenever Roman comes out late in the Rumble or they think he might win it, when Roman gets to challenge the Undertaker at Wrestlemania...what you hear is booing but the sentiment could more accurately be described as groaning. Not again. Not him, not again.

 

They just have to keep pushing him until it takes, one way or the other, somehow some way. I mean they finally, after years, cottoned onto the vitriol and have started leaning into the boos. For so long they tried to ignore them or make them go away. Then finally they went as far as acknowledging them. Now they realise they can use them, and just use him as a foil for whatever they really want to get over, because when faced with Roman Reigns as an alternative, they warm up to what's happening pretty quickly. See Orton's Rumble win, or getting Taker wrestling in 2017 over to where they want it. People will be going mad cheering for Taker at Mania, because beating him still means something, Streak or not, and nobody wants Roman to have that. So that match might have the most heat at Mania and they can pat themselves on the back saying how over Roman is, and go back to building him up as The Guy the day after. But it will just never work. Fans won't accept him, or anyone, as The Guy when it's this personal, when they just do NOT want him to succeed. Loss is right, they still haven't recovered from the 2015 Rumble. Roman will probably never recover from it.

 

Short of a heel turn, of course. Not this kind of non-turn, "let's allow him to be booed vs more popular guys" thing but an actual heel turn. Because smarks are dumb and heel turns usually fix any ill will hardcore fans have towards a babyface. He turns heel, gets to cut loose and cut interesting, scathing promos, call the fans idiots (they like that) and do some "real work", smarks usually turn around pretty quickly and proclaim that he's improved so much and is such a great worker now and deserves better. And the cheers begin. As seen with...well every babyface ever. With that plus the amount of sheer relief the fans will feel if he finally does turn, that they got what they wanted, they'll be over the moon about him pretty quickly I think, so it would work as a reset button. And if it doesn't get him cheered, then hell, you have a super mega heel on your hands. Win win.

 

I feel bad for Roman for all this. I do. He's actually a super great in-ring worker and has been for a while, I think we can all agree. He's going to be the biggest "discovery" as a worker for smart fans in 15 years when all the vitriol is long gone. Look at how people are coming around on Cena already. But as a star on the level they want him to be, he just...rubs people the wrong way. I don't know that he'll ever really overcome that. And the similarities to Cena are there, for sure, but again as I understand it Roman isn't a megadraw who can carry that baggage along with him like Cena has. So you're left with just...trolling your loyal audience over and over again. Which is hilarious I guess but...yeah. Good luck with that.

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The degree to which crowds hate Roman is kind of overplayed. I was at the Rumble live. I had friends all over the building. After the show we all shared our similar experience which was being in a section where the majority of people were cheering for Reigns, but the loudest people in the section were Reigns haters. I suspect this is not an uncommon situation.

 

At this point the logical thing to do is to have Brock beat Goldberg and Reigns beat Taker and do Reigns v. Brock for the title in New Orleans. We can debate up and down whether there are better options for the top guy than Roman, and I still strongly believe he's been sabotaged time after time, but the story is there. If Roman wins he's only the second guy to beat Taker at Mania. The other is Brock. If Brock wins he can retain the title all year on five or six defenses and people will tolerate it because Brock always gets a pass no one else gets. Reigns can play up that he had Brock on the ropes and would have beat him at Mania if not for Seth Rollins.

 

Literally the only reason to have Taker go over at this point would be to protect Taker a bit for a Taker v. Cena match at next years Mania, but really Reigns going under still doesn't make sense. For all the hand wringing about Braun losing to Reigns (full disclosure - I wouldn't have done the match before Mania and think the shittiest thing about Mania is Braun not having a proper match on the card), him losing to Taker at Mania would have been far, far worse. At least Reigns is a full time talent and he was reasonably protected in defeat. Post-streak ending a Taker loss at Mania ain't what it used to be.

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Oh I fully expect them to shoot for Roman/Brock at Summerslam. It's the only possible way to go at this point. And hell I'm down for that. I didn't love the first match QUITE as much as the people who called it ***** and MOTY and all that stuff, but it was a fucking awesome match. I mean Jesus, if they'd not done that Seth Rollins nonsense and just had Roman win at WM32, we probably wouldn't even be here. Roman was winning the crowd over before your very eyes in that match, that was his moment, and then they fucked it up for that booking and went back to "Authority is holding Roman down so bad!!" crap for another year.

 

I'd say shoot for Braun as his first big challenger, but I have zero faith in them being able to keep Braun this hot for that long.

 

I mean if they're doing the match Roman should go over Taker. I just don't really want to see the match to begin with. It's a little Roman, a little Taker is getting old, and a lot that they didn't do the Cena match when they had the chance.

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I can't imagine that rolling the dice on another twelve months is a good idea for Reigns (I can imagine they'll do it). Summerslam feels a lot more reasonable. So much of the problem with what they did a couple of years ago was not having him beat Rollins by Summerslam (if not earlier). Reigns had enough momentum after the Brock match (which worked, in real time, exactly how they wanted it to) to chase for a little while, but the key word there was little. I don't think Rollins stealing it was a bad thing, necessarily, but the key to that was Reigns beating him decisively in short order afterwards. Instead we got months and months of HHH, Jr. until Rollins ended up injured and there was never payoff (and it was too late by then anyway).

 

They can't manage a year long story if they can't book more than a few weeks in advance at any point.

 

The problem with Mania this year is that putting Reigns over Taker will piss off this crowd and they don't have a result that'll make people happy in the end. The crowd will be split on Goldberg vs Brock. No one cares THAT much about Randy Orton. AJ vs Shane will be split. Owens vs Jericho isn't high enough up the card (and even then, probably split). They don't have a match on this card where anyone actually cares about a winner. I think it's a much more interesting card than last year, but it's a disaster from that point of view.

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Is there anything in history like the Roman push? We're in our third straight year now and as Matt D stated above we're probably going to roll the dice for another year with him. History shows that when they pull the rug out from underneath someone, that's usually a sign that the company realizes the push isn't working and they try something else. But this has happened multiple times with Roman. The only similarities with the initial Cena push are the crowd dynamics. Cena was clearly the number one guy in the company and beat everyone clean for over a year after his "crowning moment."

 

Another Brock title reign seems so out of left field right now. But they HAVE to do that result, right? There's no way Goldberg sticks around past Mania, or is there?

 

I wonder what the original plan was before Balor got hurt?

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WWE doesn't do THE TOP GUY or the top babyface anymore. That dynamic is gone. What WWE does for main events now is a number of mostly interchangeable guys at the top who rotate out every couple of months. WWE isn't trying to get audiences to 100% cheer Roman, just like they don't try to get audiences to 100% cheer John Cena. The dynamic keeps the crowds engaged and, get this, having fun yelling shit at shows. You see a dad booing Roman/Cena and his son cheering Roman/Cena and they're having fun with each other.

 

The paradigm has changed and for some reason it's the smartest of fans that can't figure it out. This also goes the other way, as guys like AJ and Bray Wyatt have huge followings that are acknowledged and encouraged every week. AJ can't get sustained heel heat to save his life, but no one is claiming he's terribly booked or is doing a bad job.

 

Essentially, the main event of current WWE is presented as tweeners of varying degrees, with crowd reaction changing based on which two guys are paired up. Yes, they are nominally heels and faces, but come match time, people are going to cheer and boo who they like more than what booking tells them to do. WWE recognizes this and has played with it for years.

 

It's the guys that go to shows by themselves and try to tell kid's their favorite dude actually sucks and is booked terribly that take all the fun out of it.

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It's a lot more WWE can't book a babyface to save their lives and miscast so many popular acts as heels. I think there's something to that with Roman at the minute but that's only because they've failed so bad trying to make him the universally liked babyface. Or what I think is happening and they're very cleverly setting up for him turn to heel. But even typing that feels like giving them too much credit on current form.

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What's best creatively and what's best financially don't always intersect.

 

Roman is the 3rd biggest merch mover in the company. A significant section of the audience had made up their minds they will never like him. Why would you turn him heel and risk alienating the section of the audience that does love him (kids) to hope that the section that doesn't like him really do like him deep down and are just waiting for him to turn so they can run out and buy gauntlets and vests and dog tags and shirts and etc etc? They have a formula that works. It worked with Cena and it works with Roman. Roman can be the underdog face against a guy like Strowman, or he can be the cocky douche against guys like AJ.

 

Is he more suited to be a heel? Maybe. I think he's best suited to be a more of a Goldberg type ass kicker of few words, but he's very good at bumping and selling. Would it creatively be interesting if he went full heel? Maybe. Is it worth the financial risk of possibly poisoning the well of Roman's fanbase for another section of the fanbase that claims to vehemently hate him? Probably not.

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the problem is that Reigns is not drawing on the road like Cena did/does. Maybe he makes up for it merchandise wise but he hasn't gotten there yet with live gates. Remember last summer part of the reason they took the belt off him (along with wellness violation) was because Ambrose was out drawing him on top on the road

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No one but Cena impacts live events, not even Brock, so I don't see what that has to do with turning him or not. Why would turning him heel make people go to see him at house shows, which typically skew much more towards families and kids than TV? Those are the people that like Roman. If you turn him, why would anyone expect those houses to go up with him headlining?

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What's best creatively and what's best financially don't always intersect.

 

Roman is the 3rd biggest merch mover in the company. A significant section of the audience had made up their minds they will never like him. Why would you turn him heel and risk alienating the section of the audience that does love him (kids) to hope that the section that doesn't like him really do like him deep down and are just waiting for him to turn so they can run out and buy gauntlets and vests and dog tags and shirts and etc etc? They have a formula that works. It worked with Cena and it works with Roman. Roman can be the underdog face against a guy like Strowman, or he can be the cocky douche against guys like AJ.

 

Is he more suited to be a heel? Maybe. I think he's best suited to be a more of a Goldberg type ass kicker of few words, but he's very good at bumping and selling. Would it creatively be interesting if he went full heel? Maybe. Is it worth the financial risk of possibly poisoning the well of Roman's fanbase for another section of the fanbase that claims to vehemently hate him? Probably not.

 

I don't think turning Roman heel would affect WWE business in any significant way. The kids that wouldn't want his merch no more (which I'm not even sure how many of them would do that in 2017) would probably be replaced by the smarks that would do a 180 on Roman and start finding him cool after his first "trash the fans and talk about insider stuff" promo. Barely anyone makes a difference at house shows and in the ratings, him being a bad guy wouldn't change much imo.

 

The only thing that might happen is that he might become an interesting character. And there's a lot to gain from that, including him finally catching fire with the whole audience like many "cool heels" have done in the past.

 

Now, they might completely botch his turn like they've done anything else in the past how many years, but things are so stale that as a fan I'd welcome them taking that "risk" with Reigns.

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The "Only Cena impacts live events" deal is waning, at least here in Colorado. I was just at one without him that was packed. Last one that packed was with Cena, but it was almost three years ago.

As goes Colorado. So goes the country. 😄

 

Anyway, Miz and Maryse are obviously the heroes in this situation, right? Which leads me to believe that this whole proposal at Mania deal will have her saying "no", and it'll be all about Miz being right.

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No one but Cena impacts live events, not even Brock, so I don't see what that has to do with turning him or not. Why would turning him heel make people go to see him at house shows, which typically skew much more towards families and kids than TV? Those are the people that like Roman. If you turn him, why would anyone expect those houses to go up with him headlining?

 

So you're denying the facts of what happened last summer? And maybe houses would go up either from a) a better person getting put into the Reigns role, or B) families not happy at Reigns and wanting to see him beat up/gethis/etc, or c) he'd get some "cool heel" traction. It'd at least be more exciting creative, and if it makes no financial difference, they'd have a better show. RAW does have a major over faces issue, imo, considering how Goldberg basically got accepted over either Rollins or Reigns as strongest guy with very little pushback. So that's something WWE would need to work out if they did turn Reigns, but they'll probably just try to address it at the next draft.

 

Orton isn't the right opponent to do it against, but you'd think WWE would've figured out trying Bray Wyatt as a face by now given how mental fans went when he had that brief alliance with Reigns. And now, since they've imploded the Wyatt cult, it makes sense for Bray to go more on his own. And WWE continually proves how difficult it is to do any heel vs. face storytelling where the face is afraid of the heel and the face doesn't look like a putz. They're clearly not willing to push the Wyatt character dark enough, so they might as well make him more face Jake and Undertaker-esque.

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I didn't look at Braun backing away from the Undertaker as him being afraid. I looked at it more as a sign of respect.

 

I'm glad I wasn't the only one that saw it like that.

I think the only people who DIDN'T see it as a sign of respect are the ones that see a burial occurring at all times.
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Is "nod of respect" within the scope of Braun's character? I haven't really been watching but it was my impression that basically he just wrecks everybody in his path. Not saying it's wrong to see it that way, just wondering if it's supported by the way they've built him up.

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Yeah I guess that would be my question too. A monster heel showing respect to a guy who just interrupted him isn't a common play to make.

 

And besides, even if they are trying to play him that way, I don't particularly WANT to see him played that way. Whatever way they want to frame it, Braun Strowman The Monster Among Men was in the ring, Taker made a point of butting in and going face to face with him, and Braun...backs away from him. Who wants to see him do that? Who thinks that's what Braun Strowman should be doing? Lame.

 

But I mean, this is why I try not to watch Raw anymore. Things like this irritate me and I'm no longer invested enough to overlook things that irritate me.

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