Here’s an article for some context of what I’m about to say.
If you have heard me talk about wrestling at all, you know I don’t like Roman Reigns.
It’s not that I don’t like him as a person. I’m sure he’s a decent enough guy. And he’s not an awful wrestler (though his “superman punch” is ridiculous in a promotion where AJ Styles literally flies to do the phenomenal forearm). But he’s a black hole of charisma suck, and the three-year-long effort by WWE to shove Roman down the throat of the fans isn’t working on anyone but children. And little kids, as we can see from any WWF/WWE face, can be taught to ask for whatever person’s gear you want to sell them.
His opponent over the last few months has been a huge dude named Braun Strowman. Braun is everything the WWE loves in a wrestler: he’s big, he’s intense, he’s really big. He’s really, really intense. And big. Did I mention he was big?
The idea of Strowman was to give Roman Reigns a heel that would get him over, but just like when Roman went up against Triple H (who broke Roman’s nose and basically stole his WWE championship), it didn’t go that way. After Strowman flipped an ambulance over with Reigns inside, the next week he came to the ring to a hearty chant of “thank you Strowman! Thank you, Strowman!” while the fans once again booed Reigns.
So this past weekend, Reigns and Strowman fought again, in a themed “ambulance” match, and as is often the case Reigns made a mistake and was defeated.
Then it got interesting.
Reigns snapped and beat up Strowman, then threw him in the ambulance. Then lots of WWE magic happened because it didn’t go the way it looked on TV, but Reigns tried to commit vehicular homicide by backing the ambulance at super-intense speed into a parked truck trailer, mangling the truck and the ambulance. Roman staggered off into the arena’s locker area as a crowd gathered to hope that Strowman was okay. Minutes later as the first responders utilized the jaws of life, Strowman was freed. He refused medical help and struggled to walk away on his own, his face covered in (fake) blood.
People on Reddit complain all the time about “fantasy” booking, but as someone trained in writing, I think I can actually speak to this. Rhetorically, Reigns had become the “bad” guy. He was the heel. Not maybe. Not sort-of. He lost a match fairly and freaked out/tried to murder his opponent. Braun, meanwhile, had become the noble figure, trying to walk away and show his heroism instead of accepting help or complaining.
WWE had a chance to do something that, as the article I linked pointed out, is nearly the unicorn of wrestling storytelling: the double turn. The last time it happened was in a match between Bret Hart and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin where Austin– the heel going in– wouldn’t give up and passed out, his face covered in blood, from Bret Hart’s submission sharpshooter. Hart became the Canadian villain (yes, Canadians are foreigners in WWE) and Austin became the hero of the working class (which John Lennon taught us was something to be). It was a perfect confluence of events.
This happened again, with Braun and Roman. So long have fans been sickened by Reigns that their reactions flipped the characters. Then the characters acted out the opposing rules. And it was… perfect. It was executed just exactly how it needed to be.
Only it wasn’t a double turn. It was a really bad booking situation where the face was written in such an awful way that it’s almost hard to believe they had the nerve to present Roman as a face on Monday Night Raw. At no point did anyone other than in passing mention that he tried to commit murder the night before. And again, the WWE’s weird golden boy was awarded a title match, even as he looked like the odd man out in an amazing promo where Samoa Joe and Brock Lesnar sold their tails off.
Shame on WWE. Things like this are why people think WWE is incapable of complicated stories and treating the audience like it can handle strong narrative. Shame.