Pro Wrestling

Roman Reigns’ Royal Rumble Win Is Not All Bad

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By @nickmarsico

WWE Universe Facebook

WWE Universe Facebook

By now, everybody knows that the WWE Universe’s favourite son Daniel Bryan didn’t win the Royal Rumble match on Sunday night. In fact, he was eliminated fairly early on and in a pretty underwhelming manner, dumped out by Bray Wyatt after only 10 minutes.

Instead the intended outcome of having Bryan out of the match long enough for the crowd to cool down and adopt Roman Reigns as their new hero, the audience just became more aggressively anti-everything not named Dean Ambrose or Dolph Ziggler. They really should have seen that coming; even though in the end WWE doesn’t really care since it is the only game in town and can do what it pleases, this just proves further that it really has no clue how to read the fans.

The WWE, for all intents and purposes, is the only sports entertainment company that people really know about. That gives it carte blanche to do what it wants, when it wants, with whomever it wants. The proof is in the fact that outside of some absolutely stellar matches, the WWE has been putting out a supremely subpar product for years and still has tens of thousands of people showing up to its live shows. It makes bank on WrestleMania every year and business is just fine.

There’s no true competition, and unless there is, choices like having Reigns win the Royal Rumble match will happen no matter how loud the fans boo in the arenas and no matter how long #CancelWWENetwork trends on Twitter.

How can Reigns winning the Rumble that puts a positive spin on all that? First of all, if it wasn’t for Bryan, Reigns wouldn’t have had that kind of reaction. Ziggler and Ambrose are fan favourites, but the crowd would not throw a fit if they didn’t win and Reigns did. I don’t hate Reigns, and most people who were there in Philadelphia don’t, nor do most people complaining on Twitter.

He just wasn’t the guy people were pulling for. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to come out of this whole situation leaving himself, the WWE, and fans in a better position than before it all happened.

Remember back in 2005 when Batista won the Royal Rumble, chose to wrestle Triple H at WrestleMania 21 and beat him for the title? People were pretty much on board with Batista getting the big push, but there was a lot of trepidation about his ability to carry the load of a top guy. He had a couple more matches with Triple H and won them both, including a really good Hell in a Cell match. He has had his ups and downs, but for the most part Batista delivered during the majority of his time as a top guy.

He had the presence of being The Man, put on some fantastic matches with the likes of The Undertaker, John Cena and Eddie Guerrero among others, and overall showed that he was truly main event material. Who is to say Reigns won’t do the same?

Roman’s biggest problem are his weak promos. He’ll improve with time. Until then, there is no reason why they can’t mask his deficiencies by making him a man of few words. His in-ring work is pretty thin, but he is by no means bad. Being in the ring with the right guys in the right situations will help him improve.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that even though the guy that most fans wanted to win ended up tossed out in favor of the guy with the rocket strapped to his back, there are still plenty of opportunities for both men to shine. As it pertains to Bryan, WrestleMania isn’t the only place to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. For Reigns, fans know he is a hard worker who has all of the tools. He just needs to learn how to get a better grip on them so he can utilize them to their full potential.

Nicholas A. Marsico is a pro wrestling writer for Rant Sports. Follow him on Twitter!

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