[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by Fragile X Roman is easily one of the best wrestlers WWE has had in the main event. His offense is AWESOME and his selling is quality, not that he's HBK or something but for his character he sells very well. It sucks he gets treated the way he does, but it is what it is. He's a great wrestler.

Originally Posted by Guru Devendra Banhart I concur with Fragile X. The Big Dog is a solid worker and worthy of the "locker room leader" moniker. The lad has had some bad luck with respect to his rise to main event status coinciding with the WWE Universe's innate desire to see Daniel Bryan back in the main event picture and possibly with the Heavyweight title around his waist. You can't necessarily blame them since we never got a proper title "reign".

The biggest problem with Roman is and pretty nearly always was WWE booking. Well, except at the very beginning... he was kinda terrible, so it was about 50/50. However, that burden of blame has leveled towards the company over time. Not going to guess a split number, but if they were on a seesaw as a scale, Reigns is very clearly dangling his feet in the air while Vince & co have their asses firmly planted on the ground.

So thirsty to manufacture the next beloved box office draw; to try to create from whole cloth a carbon copy of The Rock, that they essentially forgot *how* to build a wrestler. Most of his own shortcomings, he was able to get through with time, effort, and practice. But trying to hotshot, shoehorn, and force-feed him to the masses, and not even once take the simplest path (turn him heel, let the heel turn run its course, and turn him babyface when the crowd is ready for that redemption story) was an absolute gimmie card that the company just simply left on the table. I constantly maintain that if they just bit the bullet and turned him heel at the beginning instead of dumping all this external marketing/endorsement attention at him and hoping he gets over by osmosis, they would have been able to reap the benefits of having him come full circle and be beloved organically by now.

All they had to do was *admit* he was the hand-picked, corporate champion with "the look" and a rocket up his ass. Even the horribly failed Jinder run could have had potential salvagability to it if they took the training wheels off. And by training wheels, I mean the Singh Brothers. You have a paper champion with nothing but tainted wins, and nobody is going to buy the guy as "the man". While true that heels cheat, they shouldn't *need* to cheat ALL the time in much the same way as the champion shouldn't constantly lose non-title matches. Contrary to what they always say, wins and losses actually do matter. Maybe not in a numerical context like in actual sports, but it can have a bearing on someone's career. Like the "one more match" shtick from Christian would have gotten over better if he weren't the heel of the equation. Or if, say, a guy who's supposed to be a babyface always ends up counting lights. After awhile, who wants to cheer for that loser?

The wrinkle with Daniel Bryan "getting over by losses" was the fact that the crowd knew he was getting screwed both kayfabe and for real. They wouldn't extend that type of logic to turning Roman heel, since it was a pretty poorly kept secret that he was being groomed to be the next top guy. Be it to "swerve" the IWC or out of spite or whatever, they sabotaged their own business to be supposedly smarter than the smarks. Big deal. Now that ship has sailed, and you've firmly cemented the guy as Cena-lite; the guy who's only there so little kids buy action figures, and they even had to go so far as to re-form The Shield temporarily for some damage control.

So, even with the unforeseen setbacks of emergency surgery, injury, mystery sickness, and wellness policy violations, the bigger botch on his career trajectory continues to be how he is handled as a talent.