"The Wrong Guy Went Over"

[Dirty Eddie]

 The usuals will always shit on anyone built to that position because it's forced down their throats

 

By "usuals" I assume you mean "wrestling fans" and by "always" and "anyone" I assume you mean "that one time" and "Roman Reigns"?

 

The Roman Reigns situation has been talked to death already, but it was clearly a combination of Bryan's return being a big deal to the fans, Roman's injury sending him home just as they were about to super-heat him and the fact that they tried to make him a "main event promo guy" by giving him rip-off, year 2001 Rock material (that was even too weak for Cena to touch) when he came back. A billion Big Show and Kane interactions didn't help either.

 

The only other person I can think of who'd arguably fall into your assessment might be Sheamus, as they tried to make him a new Cena type and the fans were not on board. That's (once again) because he became a smiley, joke-telling dork like Cena, and not the tough, no-nonsense ass-kicker people wanted.

 

Ryback didn't receive any in-arena backlash when he got his big push towards Hell in a Cell a few years back, and that was going against internet darling CM Punk. Yeah, I'm sure the worst kind of smarky fan didn't like it, but it didn't infect the arenas, TV shows or effect the buy-rates negatively. The insistence on doing another Rock/Cena match with the title involved screwed his chances up, not negative fans.

 

Dean Ambrose was white-hot 6 months or so ago when he was chasing down Rollins, with unanimous fan support and a great, superstar pop every time his music hit. They dialed him right back and he's become a bit of a loser. Again, nothing to do with the fans bailing on him, the creative decision was made that he was mid-card.

 

They've had a number of people who were hot over the last few years and on most occasions either he talent involved getting injured or the booking decisions has ruined it, not some cult-like sub-division of fans who rally against everything just for the sake of it.

[DeanoTheGame]

Them booing Batista when he came back as a face probably qualifies too, although Batista being really shit probably didn't help the situation.

[Pinc]

Also the last ten years of Cena's career.

[Dirty Eddie]

Them booing Batista when he came back as a face probably qualifies too, although Batista being really shit probably didn't help the situation.

 

Cena spent almost two years (on and off, admittedly) making digs at The Rock for being Mr Part-Timer who walks back in whenever he wants, while our superhero JC is here every week. Then they bring back part-time Dave as a "returning hero" for a third straight Wrestlamania main event with a part-timer, just in time to take the spot of a bloke whom the audience has completely taken to their heart. Doomed to fail. Also, as said, Batista was shite as a face this time around.

 

Beside, Batista is and was already an established superstar attraction, so the point is irrelevant. No "fan backlash" stopped his original push or caused WWE to bail out on him. He was a bona fide main event star already. Same for John Cena - he was well over as a top guy before character stagnation caused a partial backlash.

[Bosco Blick]

Impossible currently, though. The usuals will always shit on anyone built to that position because it's forced down their throats, and WWE will apparently always shit themselves and abandon plans as a result. Removing the endgame from play kind of negates the tear Lesnar's been on for the last year, but the way to swing it into a positive is to make him the bad-ass babyface.

 

So 'the usuals' would have booed Bryan had he faced and beat Lesnar at this year's Mania?

 

The problem many wrestling fans (or 'the usuals') have is when the next 'top guy' is manufactured. Cena was manufactured, and they were heading the same way with Reigns.

 

Let someone get over naturally, then pull the trigger in having them beat Lesnar. It doesn't have to happen at the next Mania. It has to happen when the time is right, and before Lesnar's contract expires of course. Lesnar being part time makes it much easier to keep his aura as an unbeatable beast.

[Pinc]

 

Them booing Batista when he came back as a face probably qualifies too, although Batista being really shit probably didn't help the situation.

 

Cena spent almost two years (on and off, admittedly) making digs at The Rock for being Mr Part-Timer who walks back in whenever he wants, while our superhero JC is here every week. Then they bring back part-time Dave as a "returning hero" for a third straight Wrestlamania main event with a part-timer, just in time to take the spot of a bloke whom the audience has completely taken to their heart. Doomed to fail. 

 

Cena was booed every time he said that and The Rock universally cheered. There's no way those same fans booed Batista because Cena told them to.

[Dirty Eddie]

 

 

Them booing Batista when he came back as a face probably qualifies too, although Batista being really shit probably didn't help the situation.

 

Cena spent almost two years (on and off, admittedly) making digs at The Rock for being Mr Part-Timer who walks back in whenever he wants, while our superhero JC is here every week. Then they bring back part-time Dave as a "returning hero" for a third straight Wrestlamania main event with a part-timer, just in time to take the spot of a bloke whom the audience has completely taken to their heart. Doomed to fail. 

 

Cena was booed every time he said that and The Rock universally cheered. There's no way those same fans booed Batista because Cena told them to.

 

That's a totally fair point, but I think it certainly contributed to the Batista backlash. Here was a bloke who wasn't nearly as big a star as the Rock (or as fondly remembered) walking back into the Mania main event. After two years of that happening there were certainly a fair few fans wanting some freshness and new blood at the top. Combine that with Bryan being shit-hot and Punk walking out and suddenly Batista was the bad guy.

 

Besides, that's not the point I was making - big Dave was already a bona fide main event guy, with loads of title reins and main events over his career. This wasn't a case of WWE trying someone new and the fans shitting on it "just because they didn't choose him".

[King Pitcos]

 

Impossible currently, though. The usuals will always shit on anyone built to that position because it's forced down their throats, and WWE will apparently always shit themselves and abandon plans as a result. Removing the endgame from play kind of negates the tear Lesnar's been on for the last year, but the way to swing it into a positive is to make him the bad-ass babyface.

 

So 'the usuals' would have booed Bryan had he faced and beat Lesnar at this year's Mania?

 

You know full well they wouldn't. You had the direct line to Vince as well, and didn't tell him. WWE have completely fucked themselves out of being able to build another top star the way they did with Hogan, Austin and Cena. The only way they can get the usuals onside with someone is by convincing them the company hates the guy, and "burying" him with 50/50 booking shite... Which in turn is going to mean the normals aren't particularly impressed by him. So, at least until they move out of The Authority era encouraging fans to boo the company's decisions, they'll be stuck choosing between new stars who get booed on TV or new stars who get cheered on TV but will never draw a dime. Or bottling it and relying on Cena until they've squeezed every last drop out of him. 

 

Rollins is in a pretty interesting position as a result. Triple H is really the only top heel WWE has ever had, in the sense of Ric Flair being the top guy in the NWA. The rest of the time, heels would get a run or two against the top babyface and that'd be it. Triple H was the only one that made a proper fist of it, and even then, his glory days were being the heel to Rock and Austin. Seth Rollins hasn't got his Rock and Austin. Cena and Bryan are being kept away from him it seems, Orton's never going to be the man, Roman Reigns could be in the process of being renamed Sheamus Luger, and the rest of the pack are well below Rollins' level. He's kind of like 2002-2005 Triple H, but if he can pull in decent numbers (and the current business model takes a fair bit of that weight off him), Rollins may be the WWE's number one guy for the next few years until they figure out how to do a top babyface again.

 

The key difference between modern WWE and 1980s NWA though is that the 1980s NWA promoters weren't flogging posters and backpacks worldwide. Building the promotion around a baddie holding onto the belt can sustain a lot of aspects of business if it's done right, but there's a reason the WWF mostly stuck to building around a hero. "All of us vs Roddy Piper" probably wouldn't have gotten greenlit as a cartoon. They're always chasing the next Hulk Hogan. Although, who did they put on the quilt covers in the couple of years between Austin retiring and Cena rising to power?

[Dr.PeterVenkman]

I agree about the fans being conditioned to boo the company's decisions due to the Authority being heels but I still don't think it's a case of fans necessarily being knobheads all the time

 

You can't get a babyface over just by them winning loads of big matches like they tried with Reigns simply because it hasn't worked since everyone worked out what a big push was in the 90's or whenever

 

Come to think of it, who was the last top line babyface who got over just by winning loads of matches? Ryback had a weird charisma to go with the winning streak (and was only main event for about 3 months realistically) Batista had one of the greatest storylines ever to get him over, Cena's heel run and eventual face turn got him over with everyone

 

Gone slightly off point with that lot but the point is that fans don't like Reigns because Vince chose him to be the new golden boy, it's because he got the generic 'win at Summerslam, win Rumble, get title shot' push that people got bored of/wise to years ago, if he'd not had the injury and they'd put him and Rollins together from the break up til about Survivor Series I think he'd be far more over, even with the knobs who boo faces at TV

[firstnameunknown]

You can't get a babyface over just by them winning loads of big matches like they tried with Reigns

 

When did Reigns win loads of big matches?  If anything, he was/is getting pinned far too often.

[air_raid]

Isn't part of the problem with Reigns that he hasn't won loads of big matches? The Shield split up and then he basically beat Randy Orton at SummerSlam and then got injured, and that's it. But we all knew that he was just going to come back and win the Rumble anyway. Because we'd known forever. I'd love to say it was me, but it wasn't - I had a mate who watched Roman splatter everyone in his match at Survivors 2013 and said "He's going to win the Rumble - not next one, but the one after" and after him getting to be the last man tossed by Big Dave, I realized the slow burn build was indeed on for Reigns. Except The Shield carried on another five months, and then all he managed to do was win the aforementioned Orton match before getting hurt and recovering in time for the Rumble. So everyone's looking at an instant main event promotion for a guy that in reality probably isn't ready and in storyline terms hasn't proven he's ready. And worst of all, we all knew they were going to do it anyway. Even if Roman did have plenty of fans, he got hurt, and in the interim on top of the fans that had never forgotten Daniel Bryan and still loved him, from crowd reactions on the PPVs I watched, plenty of others seemed to hung their hats on Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler. But we all knew Reigns was coming back to win the Rumble anyway. That's got to be pretty deflating. The terrible predictability could have had as much impact on fan backlash as anything Reigns himself did or didn't do.

[DeanoTheGame]

There's so many things that have gone wrong for Reigns. From his injury to his booking since he returned. When he was involved in the MITB and Battleground main events, and feuding with Orton, he was getting really good reactions. From all parts of the audience. The injury came at the worst time for him. A program with Rollins would've been great towards the back-end of last year and it fizzled out in a few weeks due to his injury. Even when he came back at TLC, he got a great reaction. The combination of him being booked to sell for Big Show for 15 minutes every week (which is STILL happening), along with Bryan announcing he was in the Rumble, and the predictability of his win really hindered him. It's a shame as I still think he's great and has a ton of potential. He more than held his own at Mania and a few weeks back on Smackdown, he got the hot tag in that 6-man main event and it was like the Reigns that everybody loved during the Shield was back. He came in, smashed the fuck out of everybody and got the win. Which is how he should be being booked more often than not. And he was still getting booed by a large section of the audience. I just don't know what they can do with him now to get the crowd back on-side. Big Show lashing him into a taxi a few times isn't the answer.

[King Pitcos]

Come to think of it, who was the last top line babyface who got over just by winning loads of matches?

 

Goldberg, probably. They've never hung their hat on an undefeated babyface push often. It might have happened with Ryback -- his was a curious case not just because they aborted it before it got going, but because he never really had any proper matches before then anyway. He beat jobbers (both on-roster and day players) and nobody cared much, then suddenly he got thrown into a storyline with the WWE champion. It was kind of the opposite of the on-rails Roman Reigns planned build air_raid talks about, and full of intrigue. In 2012, it was hard to imagine a new top babyface appearing, it was the unlikely thing people had been crying out for for ages. But because losing would kill him (and because there had been rumours back in 2010 that Vince saw big babyface money in Skip Sheffield), it seemed like they might well pull the trigger. In 2015, it seemed very likely that a new top babyface would emerge and that the trigger would be pulled, and people didn't want it to anymore. That's why using Rollins as the centrepiece might be the smart move for now.

[FUM]

I know I've said it to death on here but I still think Reigns would be a mega star now if he had won the Rumble that Batista won. THAT was the time to pull the trigger, not when Daniel Bryan had just returned.

[Undefeated Steak]

Come to think of it, who was the last top line babyface who got over just by winning loads of matches?

 

The thing is, winning a match doesn't mean anything it's not done right. If you have nothing going for you then your 50-0 record doesn't have much weight. Ergo, when wrestling's done properly, losing a match can do more for a character than winning a nothing match would. 

 

In fact, that would be an interesting thread. Matches where losers have come out of a match looking stronger.