The 8-Ball: Top 8 Reasons Why Roman Reigns Should Not Win the Royal Rumble

This week the 8-Ball embarks on the first of a two-part miniseries. It’s an epic drama centered around the WWE’s apparent desire to thrust Roman Reigns into the spotlight via a Royal Rumble win and then victory in the WrestleMania main event. New York Times critic A.O. Scott calls this installment of the 8-Ball “turgid” and says, “They don’t pay me enough to review this sort of thing.” The re-animated corpse of Gene Siskel says, “Brrrraaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnssss!”

Anyway, the question the Magic 8-Ball is trying to answer is whether Reigns should get that push? We start with the prosecution. This week will list the top 8 reasons why Reigns no way, no how should get the full WWE slingshot treatment. Next week will construct a defense for the WWE’s unwavering, if ham-handed attempt to turn Reigns into a megastar. We’ll get a poll up at the end of the second installment to see where the readers fall on this subject. In the meantime, here’s the case for why Reigns doing the Rumble-Mania double is a terrible idea.

You might remember the close of WrestleMania XXX, where Daniel Bryan led 75,000 people in a Yes! chant. That’s where your bar is set if you’re the WWE. That means Roman Reigns needs to go to WrestleMania 31 and top that, or at least approach it. I know Vince McMahon makes a point of saying he’s in the sports entertainment business and he doesn’t just put on wrestling matches. Fine, let’s take him at his word. Daniel Bryan certainly transcended wrestling and became a sports entertainment phenomenon. But what’s Roman Reigns going to do at WrestleMania other than just be in a wrestling match? This is the Granddaddy of Them All, the Showcase of the Immortals. Reigns doesn’t seem poised to deliver excitement or catharsis. He’s not the big star to deliver the big moment to close the show on the big stage. Reigns currently is carrying the “he’s not ready” tag. I actually somewhat disagree with that. He could believably win the WWE title. Thing is, he’s not the guy we’re dying to see win the WWE title. That is a not-so-subtle difference. The championship reign most fans likely are most eager to see is the one we didn’t get enough of in 2014: Daniel Bryan. And Daniel Bryan also is coming back to the active roster. The reality for WrestleMania 31 is the crowd probably doesn’t have Daniel Bryan out of its system yet.

It sucks for Reigns that he got that hernia injury, but he got that hernia injury. He spent a few months largely out of sight, out of mind. Like it or not, the injury took him back to square one. On top of that, Reigns’ WrestleMania push needed a ton of work before he got injured. I’m actually not that down on Reigns as an in-ring performer. In fact, I’d have had him win the title at Money in the Bank, when the crowd seemed hot for him to win. A one-month reign would have given everyone a taste and set Reigns up as the once and future king. Now they’ve got to establish the legitimacy of a guy who’s never won a singles belt and is still a bit of an unknown quantity as a singles performer. It would be one thing if Reigns had returned and the crowd was molten for him. It’s not. Can the WWE gin that up in just three months? That seems like a longshot.

Look no farther than last year to see how WWE crowds don’t take kindly to having someone forced down their throats. Batista had no business winning the Rumble or being in the WrestleMania main event. Plus, fans seem a little bit angry at the WWE for the generally shitty product. No WWE show is far away from a fan revolt these days. On top of that, the Rumble is taking place in Smarkadelphia. What happened in Pittsburgh last year will seem like a tea party compared to a Philly crowd gone rogue. The quickest, easiest way for fans to let the WWE know how ticked off they are is to boo the living hell out of the company’s anointed next golden boy. Reigns is not the result of a groundswell. He is a corporate champion in the making. The WWE is practically begging fans to focus their rage on Reigns. Alternately, buildings could just start going quiet for Reigns, like they did with Paige when she was brought on as the next big thing in the divas division. That was an unmitigated disaster and Paige is now a reclamation project, hoping to get a bounce from Total Divas. Point is, nothing works if the crowd isn’t buying it.

We’ve known for roughly eight months that Reigns beating Brock Lesnar for the title at WrestleMania 31 is the grand plan. Forget that Reigns went on the shelf and that Lesnar only fought a few times, all against the same guy. Yes, those facts completely rob Lesnar-Reigns of any semblance of feeling like an inevitable collision course between the WWE’s two alpha dogs. Still, there’s an even bigger picture here. We’re being spoon-fed a story where we know the entire plot and the ending. Why watch the Rumble if you know Lesnar will retain against Cena and Reigns will win the Rumble match? Why watch WrestleMania when you know Reigns is a lock to win? The WWE isn’t listening to its audiences. It’s just executing the plan it set in motion in April. Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead. For WWE fans, this is a giant snooze button. The world is filled with other entertainment options that will surprise and thrill you: movies, television, books, comics, video games. Why watch the WWE go through the motions?

This touches upon each of the previous four entries, but why exactly is it so damn important that Roman Reigns win the Royal Rumble and then WrestleMania? What makes him the man of the moment? Seriously, what’s the story here? Reigns hasn’t been held back or screwed over. He’s got no direct beef with Brock Lesnar or John Cena. Is he uncommonly driven to win the WWE title? Well, he seemed to take losing out on the title at MITB and Battleground in stride. He wasn’t demanding a one-on-one shot against Cena at that time. He even protected Cena’s title shot against Lesnar at TLC, costing himself the most direct route to the belt. Reigns has led a charmed existence, overcome very little and hasn’t pursued the title with any notable desire. Basically his story is that he’d like to win the Rumble and then take the WWE title at WrestleMania … just like everyone else on the WWE roster. Batista had a better story: back for a pay day. Amazing as it seems, the WWE is pushing this guy towards being the face of the company and he’s got no story, or even a character beyond a thinly sketched out badass persona. Until the WWE can answer the questions of “What is Roman Reigns all about?” and “Why should fans care?”, he shouldn’t be getting the Rumble push.

By himself Reigns hasn’t won any big ones. There was that battle royal which put him in the MITB title match, but that’s it. Roman Reigns closing the show, bringing us along for a joyride, that hasn’t materialized. We got two months of a Shield face turn where Reigns got to lay waste to a bunch of folks and people cheered, but it was exceedingly brief. His feud with Randy Orton was decent, but inconsequential. If he had surfed his immediate post-Shield momentum to a title win, then he might feel more like a contender than a pretender. Cesaro’s got a better resume. Dean Ambrose might not be able to win at a PPV, but he’s at least been in two recent main events. And in terms of big game experience + momentum, Dolph Ziggler has Reigns trumped coming and going. Hell, you want to talk about a former Shield member who’s gone out and earned a place at the top since that faction split? That’s Seth Rollins. He’s winning the breakup. Nothing against Reigns, but he’s got a belt with very few notches in it. It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine he’s the one guy who can topple Brock Lesnar.

I touched upon this in the previous entry, but the landscape has changed since Reigns went out for hernia surgery. Dolph Ziggler is on fire. This is rapidly turning into his year. Dean Ambrose also jumped into the role of next big thing in Reigns’ absence. I would argue Ambrose has been in a slump since the dummy promo, but he’s flashed 1,000% more personality than Reigns. Ryback has returned to his unstoppable superface persona. That may be in for a abrupt end now that he’s feuding with Rusev (and after his turd of a match with Kane at TLC), but the Big Guy is in play. More than all of that, the WWE’s fiscal woes have deepened. Going international did not push them over the million network subscriber mark. Existing subscribers are discontinuing their subscriptions nearly as fast as new ones sign up. Television ratings are down too. None of that is Reigns’ fault, but Reigns also might not be the solution. With investors and analysts getting restless, does Vince McMahon put his chips on Roman Reigns? It’s a ballsy move if he does. It’s especially ballsy because Daniel Bryan is just about to return to the active roster as well. Bryan’s a proven draw. Calling Reigns’ number would be a lot easier if business were running smoothly, but it’s not.

Assuming the WWE rides Brock Lesnar as champion all the way to WrestleMania, Reigns is far from the best available opponent. Lesnar’s infrequent work schedule has meant we haven’t gotten to see him in any matchups other than with John Cena. The next guy in line really isn’t Roman Reigns. It’s Daniel Bryan, and then probably Randy Orton (not that I’d build a WrestleMania around Lesnar-Orton). As mentioned above, Dolph Ziggler also seems to have line-jumped Reigns. On the flipside, Lesnar is not the most obvious opponent for Reigns. Seth Rollins owns that distinction, and the WWE would be foolish to rush through that in order to force Lesnar-Reigns. In fact, I had hoped the master plan for Hell in a Cell was Rollins-Reigns-Ambrose, but Reigns’ hernia got in the way. The three-way clash is the true dust off for the Shield and it hasn’t happened. Imagine those three colliding at WrestleMania? That’s a big match, a potential show stealer. As for a secondary choice, how about Reigns-Rusev? People have been laboring under the suspicion that Rusev has been built up to be sacrificed upon the jingoistic altar of John Cena. However, if the plan is to build Reigns as the new megaface, then it would make a lot more sense to have him be the one to fell the mighty Bulgaro-Russian. For the record, I’d string Rusev’s streak out to SummerSlam, but if the Creative plan is for it to fall at WrestleMania, then Reigns would be an excellent pick for the gig. If Sheamus will be back in time for WrestleMania, and if he’s getting that much-needed heel turn, then he’d be a better opponent for Reigns too. Oh yeah, there’s also that Bray Wyatt guy. Rather than shoehorning Reigns into a feud with Lesnar fraught with potential failure, the WWE could be setting Reigns up for a WrestleMania match that truly puts him on the world champion arc that corporate envisions for him.

I take requests.. The purpose of this column is to look forward. What could be? What should be? What is and what should never be? What would make more sense? 411 has plenty of columns that count down and rank things that happened in the past. This is not one of those columns. The Magic 8-Ball is here to gaze into the future. If there’s someone or something you think should be given the 8-Ball treatment, mention it in the comments section. I might pick it up for future weeks.