No chance this happens. It should though with what a d-bag he seems to be in real life. Let him be himself on the mic.

WWE really needs to just pay Brock the money. It would be awesome if they did the double turn at Mania and they resign Brock and he continues as a face. They always talk about how faces sell more merch. Why not turn Brock face to help offset the money it takes to pay him?

Has Reigns done a bunch of douche-y **** in real life?

Yes.

Dissing people trying to get autographs. Not just rejecting them but being a dick. Saying that IWC shouldn't have an opinion because we've never stepped in the ring. Saying that he's all about that money and WWE is pushing him and to get over it.

I'm cool with that last one because it's his job and you do a job to get paid. All that stuff is the makings of a heel though.

Two Reigns quotes that have been thrown around lately

That's a shame. I want to feel sorry for the guy. He's backed into a corner, it's a nice corner, but it's still a corner. He's not ready, maybe he knows he's not ready, but his bosses want him to be the guy, what's he going to say? No?

Then you find out he's an ass in real life and he becomes impossible to root for.

I'll even give him the first quote, that seems harmless to me. He's a pro, he wants to get paid for his work, we all do, but that second answer is just petulant wanking.

The post Rumble interview with Rock and Reigns came off as very heelish as well, with Rock threatening the interviewer rather believably multiple times. But it just made Reigns look like nothing in comparison to him, so if it was foreshadowing it wasn't good foreshadowing; "he's going to be a heel, but not an effective one!" Foreshadowing requires sensible long term planning, which isn't this company's strong suit.

BUT HE'S THE ROCK'S COUSIN!

One thing the WWF had avoided throughout the years was the "hey, these guys are related!" thing that failed so often in other places. Now even that is gone. But at least Rock and Reigns aren't really cousins by birth.

If reigns is actually an irl douchebag that has to be the least shocking thing ever

According to the Observer, current plans are for Cena to lose to Rusev, and for Reigns to lose to Brock in a dirty finish.

Cena will then come out to aid Reigns, and Heyman dares Cena to fight Brock for the title. Heyman tries to throw salt in Cena's eyes, but hits Brock isntead. Cena scores the pin as Reigns real cousin Yokozuna sheds tears in heaven.

LOL A+

moorobot is on fire tonight

I mean, Michaels was a dick when he was on top. But he wasn't a charisma vacuum. That's the real problem.

Has anyone heard or read anything else on Bubba? Was that just a one time thing or is he back for good?

Yep I don't think anybody hates on a cocky heel champ.

So this is a pretty far fetched conspiracy theory and I probably deserve to be laughed at but is there any chance the lack of credible face threats for Lesnar was by design? He was built as a monster and we now know that was all to put Roman over. If you look at post-mania 2014 as a whole, the only wrestlers coming out looking really strong were Lesnar and Roman(if you take WWE's word). Ambrose was almost there before the Wyatt angle killed all his momentum and the only other guys to get any real character progression were Rollins and Rusev, both heels. Heel Rusev/Lana vs face Lesnar/Heyman would be incredible but that's never happening. Cena is Cena but even he got squashed to advance Lesnar's story.

Anyone not called John Cena that threatened to out pop Reigns was almost instantly nerfed. Bryan had just beaten HHH, Orton and Batista in one night but we're supposed to believe that he is scared of Kane because Kane put a mask on. Kane had just got squashed at WM. Then Bryan gets injured for 9 months and returns to zero fanfare. We all saw what happened to Cesaro. Ziggler was getting great reactions and has gone seemingly no where. BNB got cheered when he won the IC title, better put a stop that. Ambrose had all his momentum squashed in order to keep Wyatt relevant. They don't have any upper card singles faces left, they had to push guys like Rowan and Ryback. It just seems like they've been holding people back in order to protect the golden child Roman Reigns. I'm probably just over thinking it.

One very real problem they have is that people ****ing love Lesnar. Every attempt to get us to boo him has back fired. He beat up Big Show with chairs at the RR, who cares **** Big Show. He went over Taker but more people were pissed off at Vince than Brock. He did it clean anyway. They had him squash Cena but everyone loved it. Then had that awesome match at RR. They've really given us no reason to dislike him. He says he is going to kick someone's ass and then he does. Isn't that what Stone Cold did? He isn't a monster heel, he's a monster tweener and in almost every arena he is going to get bigger face pops than Roman.

They both have the same most likely cause: the powers that be seem to have forgotten crowd psychology. That's largely why so many Smackdowns and Raws suck, that is why the announcing sucks, that's why the matches don't feel important, that's why they have no midcard, that's why they haven't made stars lately. They don't understand how the people will react. That and the lack of long term planning.

It seems to me the faces thing is due to general incompetence. Even if it is a design it is a very stupid one.

Lesnar does very little to make people hate him. He's not a fraud, he's not a coward, he's not evil, he doesn't cheat, he didn't hurt a very popular wrestler with a sneak attack etc. What he does makes people want to be him, or be a fan of his.

Careful you don't get banned bro.

I would go even further. Punk stated in his shoot that the shield was originally supposed to include Ambrose, Rollins and Chris Hero, and was intended to be a stable lead by Punk. Looks like the office liked the idea, but hijacked it to use as a vehicle for Reigns.

So I was thinking about how much it sucks that every match has to end with someone's signature finisher these days, and then I realized why.

It sucks for us, because we've seen Cena's Five Moves Of Doom a thousand times, we know that despite having a limitless arsenal of attacks that 50% of Daniel Bryan matches this year will end with a running knee (the other 50% will be Kane interfering or the occasional submission), we know that if HHH beats Sting it's going to be with a Pedigree because ldo.

And then I thought "hey, if I take my kid to the arena to watch a live Raw for the first time, and shell out good money for tickets, and my kid sees John Cena beat (insert name here) with a drop toehold and two elbows to the face, I'm going to feel sad for my kid who got cheated out of seeing John Cena be John Cena for the night". And it all made sense.

In short, we all watch too much wrestling to be wrestling fans.

Well if the show was a big deviation away from what they always do, that would be an understandable reaction. That's why they would sort of need to slowly phase out the constant need for finishers. I don't think it's only us who would find wrestling matches more exciting if they could end in a whole huge variety of ways...the same effect would apply to casuals.

I realize that this is all moot and purely theoretical because there's no chance whatsoever that they'll go away from their current model. I'd sure as hell like them to slow way way down on the number of finisher kickouts (that's something that should happen maybe a total of once or twice a year across the company), but hope probably isn't warranted on that front at this point either.

Distraction roll up.

I distinctly remember one of the things that hooked me on the NWA when I was a young kid despite the poor production values that made it look 2nd rate/not the big leauges was that the matches would end in so many different ways, while WWF TV matches would seemingly always end in finishers or would be non-endings. It gave them a much more dramatic and exciting feel throughout the match, rather than just relaxing until the one special move that actually is powerful enough to put somebody down for three, which seems to be what crowds are doing more and more today.

Well, yeah. The finisher kickouts and every match ending on a finisher go hand in hand of course, because if every match ends in a finisher the only way to make it more dramatic IS to have people kick out of finishers.

We're all sort of saying the same thing; it's just that I kind of realize where they're coming from from a business point of view. You don't want your live fans to feel cheated because they saw (for instance) Randy Orton take someone out with a well placed dropkick instead of an RKO. And in the age where stuff gets around, everyone knows what Orton's capable of and OMG why did he underperform for us I'm never buying his shirt again blah blah.

This would be partly solved by having more entertaining jobbers who could be the Glass Joe that you could defeat without a finisher (bonus: your top guys don't always fight each other), but there are two problems with that too:

1) it's hard to be an entertaining jobber the fans care about despite always losing, especially today. You get maybe one or two of those guys on a roster at a given time, and those are basically never heels (which you'd need for your top faces to beat up).

2) obviously developing those guys requires giving a lot more time to entertaining jobbers on your weekly programming, and that time is never coming away from the Cenas of the world, so basically we're saying "be better with all the stuff your non-elite wrestlers do", and that's kind of an empty threat.