Roman Reigns’ push in WWE was unavoidable and it looks like he was primed for the top of the card no matter what the fans could do about it. But for some reason even though everything was telegraphed for well over a year, Roman Reigns couldn’t pull down the big win in New Orleans at WrestleMania 34 against Brock Lesnar.
Instead, Lesnar took a bunch of spears but survived every one of them. Even though Roman Reigns did kick out of the F5 as he was supposed to, the fifth one put him down for the count.
Bryan Alvarez recently painted an analogy on Wrestling Observer Live and while discussing his point he expanded on the idea of Roman Reigns’ failed WrestleMania main event (via Ringside News).
“Vince McMahon had a one-year plan and it involved Brock beating everybody with one F5 and then at WrestleMania he would hit on one Roman and Roman would kick out and spear him and win. That was the plan all the way up to a week before Mania when I guess Vince was surprised Roman got booed so Vince said, ‘I’m changing my plan!'”
“They decided to keep the title on Brock Lesnar and do an absolutely stupid storyline where Roman Reigns would claim he’s being screwed by the authority and that’s why he’s not champion. Even though if you watch the show he’s been beaten repeatedly. So as viewers we’re supposed to believe that in real life they’re not letting him become champion and we’re supposed to sympathize with him. If you’ve watched the show you know this hasn’t worked and I don’t know if it’s going to work.”
In the end, it looks like the fans’ opinions were heard after all even though it was so apparent to us all they would be eventually ignored. Now Roman Reigns is still trying to get over and Brock Lesnar is holding the Universal Title until SummerSlam as Alvarez speculated.
Only time will tell if Roman Reigns will be able to get over the way Vince McMahon would prefer. But he’s been able to avoid disaster so far, let’s just hope something WWE tries will work eventually before they burn out a valuable commodity such as overall fan interest.
