It's just baffling. There is EVERY indication that this will never work, so it doesn't make sense why they continue with it.
My only thought is that it has to do with Vince's ego. He has in the past stated that as a third generation promoter that he knows better than anyone what decisions to make in regards to what will work. But that's asinine. He honestly believes that he can tell people what they are supposed to like.
It's nothing new. He's done it before. But usually, he loses the pig headedness and eventually backs off. He backed off the Luger train, although that may have had more to do with Luger's other problems. He backed of the Rocky Maivia train, and I am sure that was hard has hell for him. I don't know why he has such a bug up his ass about Roman, but it seems he's almost willing to completely go down with the ship on this one.
And I agree. It's not Joe's fault. Although, honestly, I think he needs to be a little less of a dick to the fans who don't like him when the cameras are off. He needs to take a page from John Cena and try embracing the people who hate him. THAT is why Cena can be the number one guy while also being despised by a huge faction of fans. But this animosity for Roman Reigns is only going to keep growing and it is going to eventually really hurt the WWE and it might ruin Joe's career if they don't do something different with him.
Man, whenever we get into the Roman Reigns discussion on here, we bring up that last part and remember his line about "Sure, there's a lot of hate for me, but at the end of the day, I'm just a dude getting rich!"... and it's SO apparent that it would be the GOAT heel catchphrase. LETS DO IT VINCE
But... It's a weird time in wrestling, and I can't help but think Vince is overthinking kayfabe and the modern wrestling fan. We talk about our star ratings and our backstage drama and all this stuff and understand pushes and faces and heels and... Vince clearly knows this. Like I can't get away from his whole "I'm not a good guy..." line, where he was winking at the fans talking about how "Hey, I'm not a face or a heel, but I'm VINCE'S CHOSEN ONE". Annoying enough, but then you add in how it made no sense for the TV character Roman Reigns to be talking about out of kayfabe bullshit while running down AJ Styles... (Which is why I thought he was designed to be a heel during this time. Really all of 2016 before they were like "Look! Shield bros are back! Double Powerbombs! Member the Shield, eh? Remember how cool they were? Remember how cool Roman was? Oooooahhhhh? Yeah!?"). Enough with the shades of grey stuff, and the Cena-esque "Either way, they're invested! They'll pay to watch him win or they'll pay to watch him lose!" junk can go. We know what faces and heels are in WWE nowadays, that doesn't mean they don't matter anymore. There's too many great examples recently of the proper alignments helping a match out tremendously.
Like with the rest of Raw, there's this sense of "Well we need storylines on the show because that's what brings people in and all but ehhhhh the fans really don't care about them so if they suck and produce a 3 1/2 star main event of Raw hey they'll be happy!"... Would be nice if they could take a cue from Smackdown and see just how much that show's benefitted from just doing some small things well. Stuff the McMahons can take lessons from... well, watching themselves on their own documentaries.
The Vince of those days knew the fans loved the faces and hated the heels regardless because it was all o-kayfabe. Now it seems like he's been too many people on Twitter create the cluster of a wrestling scene we have today, when it just seems so simple as redoing Luger or Maivia.
If Reigns was on Smackdown, maybe they'd find a way to make us accept him as a face. Doubt he'll be this Hulk Hogan level megastar that Vince expects, but as a perfectly fine main event babyface much like 2017 Cena? Why not?
Not even sure if this was a very good ramble piece, thinking about it has went in 100 different directions the last few days, but... Hey, discussion!
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