As Michael Cole would say, it’s one of the most polarizing main events in WrestleMania history as the champion, the Cerebral Assassin, 14-time champion and conqueror of everything Triple H squares off with the burgeoning badass who’ll take a punch and deliver punishment to anyone who’ll stand in his path, Roman Reigns. And we the fans get to sit back and ask the question, yet again.
Is Roman is the right guy for this spot?
Hello PWPNation, it’s great to be here on the bus with you as we ride on the Road the Wrestlemania! While this is the first time for us to speak, I’ve been hearing you. I’ve been hearing your gripes and complaints about The Big Dog as he ascends to his status as “The Guy” in WWE, and two of the biggest comparisons I hear are Daniel Bryan and Stone Cold. Two guys who fought authority and could believably bring the fight and kick your butt like nobody else could… but something seemed odd about that comparison.
This feud was never about Roman Reigns “having an issue with authority”. This was a blood feud. This was two guys who wanted to beat each other so badly, and the violence kept escalating and reaching a climax at The Grandest Stage of Them All. And yet… this feud just seems so lame going into WrestleMania.
Lets go back in time in the way-back machine to the buildup to Survivor Series. After an entertaining run as Dean Ambrose’s best buddy, Roman Reigns won a #1 contender’s match to become the next big challenger to top heel Seth Rollins.
He was starting to get a few mixed reactions, but people were accepting of Reigns going after his former Shield-mate and putting an end to Rollins’s lackluster championship run. But with WWE, even the most carefully laid-out plans can be thrown out the window with just one mere knee injury, and The Shield’s revenge on Rollins will have to wait…
But The Authority are huge fans of Roman. Triple H really liked him with The Shield, but he lacked that “killer instinct” that Rollins inspired in him. So they made an offer… join us, and get to the finals immediately. Don’t, and fight your way from the bottom up.
Roman told him to take his offer and shove it, he doesn’t need Hunter’s help. He was stabbed in the back already by Rollins and damn sure wasn’t going to go down his path. It was on. They punished him with a match with The Big Show in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship Tournament before he went on and won the entire thing…before Hunter stepped in.
Triple H went out to shake his hand, just to be blindsided by Sheamus, because the Authority always gets what they want…
Problem #1 with this angle was right here: Sheamus. Breaking news, wrestling columnist thinks less Sheamus is a good idea…bear with me here.
Spending a month away from this fresh feud wound up being as big of a mistake as trying to pass the League of Nations off as a legit top heel group. Sheamus as a World Heavyweight Champion was fine the same way Randy Orton was in 2013. The story coming out of Survivor Series was that Triple H was IRATE that Roman would pass on such a generous offer. I mean, this is Triple H. This is the COO of WWE, 14 time champion, conqueror of everything, Cerebral Assassin, King of Kings, Husband of Stephanie…
Who does Roman think he is to have the audacity to say he doesn’t need his help to reach the top? Sheamus shook his hand. Look where he is now, and look at you, Roman. Another month, still no World Heavyweight Championship. Boo-hoo. Should have taken that offer.
It would have been better than tater tots, you can believe that. Son.
Maybe it could have added some heat to a TLC show where Roman Reigns finally had enough of technicalities…
Had enough of MITB cash ins ruining his day and had enough of clashes with the unreasonable goliath that’s running the company…
This run-in by The League of Nations was one too many. He snapped. He destroyed EVERYONE. Roman took that chair and left a trail of broken bodies in his wake. Almost a year of frustration got beaten into Triple H’s back. He’s getting stretchered out and the crowd is eating it up. For the first time, Roman has the crowd in the palm of his hand, and he’s on cloud nine. He has all the courage in the world and did what he always wanted but was afraid to do. Who knows what else he could do, beat down Vince McMahon?
Roman shows up like a hero on Raw, and wouldn’t you know it, here comes Vince McMahon! He’s not the “evil boss”, but for revenge at the person who injured his son-in-law.. and… also a ruthless boss who’ll use him up and thrown him away. By the end of the show, Roman Superman Punches the Chairman of the Board, wins the WWE World Heavyweight Championship from Sheamus, and Philadephia loves him! Everything was going well…
…but whenever you’re on top of the world, there’s only one way to go. The second problem was struggling to keep this momentum going on The Road to Royal Rumble. With Stephanie the only McMahon left that Roman didn’t dispatch, we saw four three-hour episodes of Raw in-between his destruction of the McMahons and his “One Versus All” match at the Royal Rumble. Surely you could think of a good way to keep Roman’s momentum going here. He couldn’t just feud with Triple H’s League of Nations henchmen, they aren’t over enough.
Still, it would have been a better idea than Roman having 20 minute back and forth promos with Stephanie, which we know aren’t exactly Roman’s strong point, especially with no payoff coming on the horizon. Enough of these really undid a lot of the good will that Roman Reigns built up with the fanbase.
…then the Royal Rumble happened. Despite the boos and The League of Nations attack, the story was a good one. Triple H was going to pop up as the final boss, just as Roman thought he had a good chance to win, Hunter was there to make his life miserable and win the belt for himself as payback for putting him on the shelf at TLC. Roman Reigns was screwed over yet again. Hunter got his revenge in ways only he, the COO of WWE, can get. The Authority wins. The Authority always wins, Roman. Should have taken my offer…
The night after Royal Rumble and the ensuing month was problem #3. Yes, giving Roman Reigns (and Dean Ambrose) championship matches for no real reason was completely illogical, even if “making the best friends we hate turn on each other in a battle with Brock Lesnar” makes sense on paper. Yes, having Ambrose nearby to be a more entertaining character in the same spot doesn’t help.
But the biggest problem with it was that this is a grudge feud, The violence was escalating. Roman didn’t shake his hand, so Triple H schemed a way to keep him away from the belt at Survivor Series, so Roman beat him with a chair over and over for revenge, so Triple H returned at the Royal Rumble to ensure that Roman still didn’t get what he wanted… and they respond with… giving Roman a championship match and Roman does… nothing? For the Royal Rumble debacle? Really?
It also doesn’t feel like a grudge feud because there hasn’t been nearly enough Triple H. That’s normally a good thing, but when the antagonist isn’t antagonizing for months at a time, it hardly feels like a grudge feud in the end and Roman Reigns is left rebelling against nothing.
But what if it was?
What about if we were going into WrestleMania salivating over the final encounter between these two titans after months of them exchanging blows, instead of talking over how Roman is “failing” as the next Stone Cold battling against authority? What if this feud could cause us to see past Roman’s “mic skills” and “overness” to enjoy the downfall of the Authority, as Roman gets all his pent-up frustrations out, conquers Triple H, before Shane dispatches them for good instead of another case of “WWE telling us who we should and shouldn’t like?”
There’s lots of what if’s in wrestling, this one could have been a biggie.
Doug Raine
