Ric Flair: Roman should've won.

[Snowman1]

..... I'm ready for the dislikes... but he's (almost) right.

The timing wasn't right when this thread was made, but... lets kick it old-school here, Flair. How do you draw money? Heat. Make people hate you, and people will pay to see you.

We had Seth Rollins and Finn Balor as two of the best damn in-ring wrestlers we've seen in a match people were kinda-sorta looking forward to, but the story coming out of it was how much everyone hated that damn belt and how the entire audience just buried that thing and paid so little attention to ROLLINS VS BALOR... Meanwhile we just got done watching Roman Reigns defending against AJ Styles and we were rabid. We were hanging by every pinfall and begging WWE to do the right thing and throw that belt on Styles and not here about THE GUY anymore. WWE did such an amazing job getting heel heat on Reigns and at every show we were hyped for the main events these two had and all the interesting possibilities that could come of it.

While granted, a good bit of it was "OMG would Finn Balor debut!?!?!?!?!" instead of this Clash of Champions main event that so was clearly a plot device for a story nobody can possibly care about, but when you look back at that Summerslam match we would have forgotten about that belt REAL quick when Reigns hit the ring to his usual ovation of BOOOOOOOOO and we'd be hanging by every pinfall, willing Balor to victory and just begging that Roman doesn't win that damn belt again that we're all so sick of Roman and can't wait for Finn to save us from another title reign and OHHHHH COUP DE GRACE!! 1...2...

ESPECIALLY coming off the suspension, since that's bonus heel heat for the REAL corporate champ. Everyone else is just a bad guy on TV

Maybe Roman Reigns is what we need after all. Just don't admit it to yourselves and ruin it for everyone.

 

[Jacob Fox]

..... I'm ready for the dislikes... but he's (almost) right.

The timing wasn't right when this thread was made, but... lets kick it old-school here, Flair. How do you draw money? Heat. Make people hate you, and people will pay to see you.

We had Seth Rollins and Finn Balor as two of the best damn in-ring wrestlers we've seen in a match people were kinda-sorta looking forward to, but the story coming out of it was how much everyone hated that damn belt and how the entire audience just buried that thing and paid so little attention to ROLLINS VS BALOR... Meanwhile we just got done watching Roman Reigns defending against AJ Styles and we were rabid. We were hanging by every pinfall and begging WWE to do the right thing and throw that belt on Styles and not here about THE GUY anymore. WWE did such an amazing job getting heel heat on Reigns and at every show we were hyped for the main events these two had and all the interesting possibilities that could come of it.

While granted, a good bit of it was "OMG would Finn Balor debut!?!?!?!?!" instead of this Clash of Champions main event that so was clearly a plot device for a story nobody can possibly care about, but when you look back at that Summerslam match we would have forgotten about that belt REAL quick when Reigns hit the ring to his usual ovation of BOOOOOOOOO and we'd be hanging by every pinfall, willing Balor to victory and just begging that Roman doesn't win that damn belt again that we're all so sick of Roman and can't wait for Finn to save us from another title reign and OHHHHH COUP DE GRACE!! 1...2...

ESPECIALLY coming off the suspension, since that's bonus heel heat for the REAL corporate champ. Everyone else is just a bad guy on TV

Maybe Roman Reigns is what we need after all. Just don't admit it to yourselves and ruin it for everyone.

I won't dislike, but I do disagree. In 2006, I wrote an article that got me a lot of personal attacks and criticism. I made the argument that Jeff Jarrett was the best choice for TNA champion at the time. Now, that likely was not the case really. In fact, with Sting and Kurt Angle coming into the company soon after, they were obviously better than Jarrett. I can admit that Jarrett was more of a personal choice.

One of the arguments used against me was the difference between good heat and bad heat. Now, I don't COMPLETELY subscribe to this theory but there is SOME credence to it. Yes, I disliked Roman Reigns as champion. But it wasn't good heat. It did NOT make me want to watch WWE to see him lose because so many times I tried to do this and almost every time, I ended up pissed off or disappointed. In fact, this inexplicable push for Reigns began really burning me out on wrestling. And although I didn't say this outright on the forum, I did tell the people in my house that night that if Roman Reigns ended up winning that belt, I was done with it. There is more than enough wrestling in the world for me to watch that I wasn't going to continue to watch a show that was disappointing me to this level OVER and OVER. If that is not the definition of bad heat, I don't know what is.

Now, I think everyone here knows how loyal I am to the product. So if someone like me was considering not watching anymore if they just handed the belt to Reigns, I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way. Bad heat.

Now I could be wrong too. But several months after I wrote that article, Jeff Jarrett won the NWA World Championship in a King of the Mountain match. It was OBVIOUS to anyone with a brain that this was setting up Sting's eventual win over Jarrett at Bound for Glory. Jarrett had all the heat right? So Sting gets to become the conquering champion. Regardless, the fans in the audience littered the ring much in the same way they did in WCW when Hogan first turned heel. I know several people who were so pissed off that they quit watching TNA even though they KNEW this was only temporary.

WWE did the right thing with the situation. They moved away from the stale and aggravating Reigns situation. They approached it with a fresh outlook by putting some guys on top that they hadn't done before. Furthermore, they took Roman Reigns and they approached him from a different angle. By taking him out of the main event picture and putting him up against Rusev, a lot of the negative heat surrounded Roman has eased off a bit. He has gotten some crowd reactions unlike anything he has gotten in a long time. While it's not completely positive, it has worked.

If they had just given the belt to Roman, they would have just exacerbated the situation they had with him and I don't think it would have helped anyone. They handled it perfectly.

 

[Snowman1]

I won't dislike, but I do disagree. In 2006, I wrote an article that got me a lot of personal attacks and criticism. I made the argument that Jeff Jarrett was the best choice for TNA champion at the time. Now, that likely was not the case really. In fact, with Sting and Kurt Angle coming into the company soon after, they were obviously better than Jarrett. I can admit that Jarrett was more of a personal choice.

One of the arguments used against me was the difference between good heat and bad heat. Now, I don't COMPLETELY subscribe to this theory but there is SOME credence to it. Yes, I disliked Roman Reigns as champion. But it wasn't good heat. It did NOT make me want to watch WWE to see him lose because so many times I tried to do this and almost every time, I ended up pissed off or disappointed. In fact, this inexplicable push for Reigns began really burning me out on wrestling. And although I didn't say this outright on the forum, I did tell the people in my house that night that if Roman Reigns ended up winning that belt, I was done with it. There is more than enough wrestling in the world for me to watch that I wasn't going to continue to watch a show that was disappointing me to this level OVER and OVER. If that is not the definition of bad heat, I don't know what is.

Now, I think everyone here knows how loyal I am to the product. So if someone like me was considering not watching anymore if they just handed the belt to Reigns, I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way. Bad heat.

Now I could be wrong too. But several months after I wrote that article, Jeff Jarrett won the NWA World Championship in a King of the Mountain match. It was OBVIOUS to anyone with a brain that this was setting up Sting's eventual win over Jarrett at Bound for Glory. Jarrett had all the heat right? So Sting gets to become the conquering champion. Regardless, the fans in the audience littered the ring much in the same way they did in WCW when Hogan first turned heel. I know several people who were so pissed off that they quit watching TNA even though they KNEW this was only temporary.

WWE did the right thing with the situation. They moved away from the stale and aggravating Reigns situation. They approached it with a fresh outlook by putting some guys on top that they hadn't done before. Furthermore, they took Roman Reigns and they approached him from a different angle. By taking him out of the main event picture and putting him up against Rusev, a lot of the negative heat surrounded Roman has eased off a bit. He has gotten some crowd reactions unlike anything he has gotten in a long time. While it's not completely positive, it has worked.

If they had just given the belt to Roman, they would have just exacerbated the situation they had with him and I don't think it would have helped anyone. They handled it perfectly.

Quick reply: In this rant there was a big fail on my part. When composing that rant I brought up "the timing was terrible" but didn't expand upon it. Roman being a main-eventer is great since it brings heat and passion to matches, but that glossed over the point of the thread: Roman winning that match over Finn - or better yet, going on to Summerslam and going over Balor there - definitely would have felt like some truly oppressive bullshit.

All the points I made still stand, just forgot to include that one. Feel like such a moron lol.

As much as I feel like heat needs to be re-thought in 2016, as guys like Kevin Owens who would have been money heels in a different era are now beloved and appreciated for their great work (although old emotional tactics like dusty finishes and giving you a taste of babyface victory to yank it away still work, as did the whole 1995 "Bret Hart over Lex Luger" debate that Hart won, proving that smaller worker dudes were beloved 21 years ago too and not just in the internet age), and how much more emotionally invested we are when a guy we hate as much as we did Reigns is in a match, that was reaching a ridiculous level. Would "2009 Cena" be the best parallel? When that dude was so dominant and above everyone else that it turned fans away?

Still, with the exception of Miz I'm not sure how you draw the classic "good heat" any more. If you watched Bound for Glory, watching the Bennetts get their comeuppance was fun, it was easy to root for the guys going against them without wanting to make us turn the show off, but I doubt that worked for many viewers.

Idk, rambling here to cover my ass. Which is also not working. :haha: