JerryvonKramer

Hey, I'm a generic teenager. Don't really care about Roman Reigns, or who he is, but this t-shirt goes with my tatoos and fashion sense.

I mean most of those t-shirts and hoodies you wouldn't know had anything to do with wrestling.

Maybe it sells because it looks cool and not because he's over.

http://shop.wwe.com/Roman-Reigns/roman-reigns,default,sc.html This Reigns stuff doesn't look very kiddie either.

Because kids are known for buying action figures. It is teenagers who are more known for buying t-shirts, that's why.

It didn't seem to hurt John Cena's popularity with kids at all so I'm not thinking it's a huge deal. We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it's awful to see top babyfaces booed. It was bad with Cena. It is even worse with Roman. Also, action figure sales need to be taken with a pince of salt. I wonder how many IRS figures were sold back in 1991. Kids buy action figures, of heels, of faces, of whoever. It doesn't mean anything really. How many kids in the 1980s owned this guy: Basically everyone I knew. Who was he? Do you remember him from the cartoon? Was he everyone's hero? I don't think you can draw many conclusions from merch.

I'll never understand this attitude that you can ignore your live crowds. Because it's terrible -- not to mention embarrassing -- to see your top babyface booed on international TV watched by millions of people world-wide, and on your biggest shows? Imagine if Bruno or Hogan or Austin had come out of choruses of boos every week. Disregarding the boos is just plain bad, whichever way you slice it. And it's not just the live crowd. It's twitter. The whole shebang. Kids aren't blind or deaf. They can see their guy getting booed. Is it okay for a generation of kids to grow up with their babyface heroes hated by the crowd? It's so counter-intuitive and stupid.

Punk is another one. Kevin Owens. List goes on and on. At this point, the fanbase clearly requires non-WWE experience and the perceived "authenticity" that goes along with that. They don't want factory-made WWE pure breds.

Judging by the reaction to AJ Styles, is it a bad idea? They brought in Samoa Joe to a big reaction earlier this year. Bryan was over like rover. The fans seem to be saying "Let WWE be the big leagues and the final destination for the world's greatest wrestlers". It wouldn't require selling up, just a change in philosophy. Vince has come a hell of a long way from not acknowledging the previous histories of workers. They weren't acting as if Styles was an unknown with no past. So there has already been a change in philosophy. Just that he has not yet let go of his vision of using the machine to make stars -- it didn't work in 1990 and it hasn't worked here. Vince was actually out there, himself, he can't literally be deaf.

I seem to recall him being hated at other shows too. Last Rumble, for example, to the point where even The Rock couldn't save him. This is a year later. He didn't get big pops at the others shows I've seen either. I don't bother with the minor PPVs because life's too short. But to me -- someone who only watches the big shows -- it looks like he's been rejected utterly by the audience. If it was me, I'd cut my losses with him entirely. Fire him. Let him go out and gain some cred on the indie circuit or in Japan or whatever, and then bring him back when the fans are ready to cheer him. OR, turn him heel. As a babyface he is a lost cause.

Well from what I've seen, he wasn't as over on taped live shows as Luger in 93-4 or Hogan in 94-5. Fact. Unless WWF / WCW were piping in the cheers. Which is possible also. Hogan is audibly booed at Mania 8 (1992) and has mixed reactions at some shows in 95. Reigns was 100% hated by that Rumble crowd on Sunday to a point that I haven't seen since Erik Watts. If you want to come up with a better analogy because of action figure sales or whatever, go for it. Purely from the reaction stand point that I can see and hear on my TV he's closer to Watts than Hogan or Luger.

The fact that he's on a review show and his review for every show is the same. I want more critical discernment from him. He's far more critically discerning when we watch stuff from 1970s and 1980s. But it's like we get to this stuff and he loses all sense of taste. That's my feedback. What good can come from it? A more critically discerning Johnny who doesn't blanket love all WWE shows.

Wrestling in general WWF/E

^ I mean in terms of overness. Hogan and Luger were being booed by some, but they were still basically over. Listen to the crowds at Summerslam 93 or even Mania X. Or at any WCW show during the Hogan run. The only comparable figures I can think of for Reigns in terms of being THOROUGHLY rejected by the fans back when wrestling was good are The Renegade and Erik Watts.

The Renegade

No, imagine it being said dispassionately. Johnny knows I love him.

Want to see this so badly. I laughed my ass off at his last Mania entrance. I also laughed very hard at the Rumble win and DX chop. HHH is possibly one of the funniest wrestlers of all time at the moment. At least to me he is.

Haven't listened to this yet but .... This is Johnny's review for Royal Rumble 2016, TLC 2015, Survivor Series 2015, Hell in a Cell 2015, Battleground 2015, Summerslam 2015 Money in the Bank 2015, Elimination Chamber 2015, Payback 2015, King of the Ring 2015, Extreme Rules 2015 and every other forgettable show that has happened since God Knows When. Not having a go, necessarily, just pointing out the crushing predictability of Johnny's reaction.

Open in audacity, split audio channels, turn both to mono. Export to MP3. It will mix the audio down across both speakers and solve weirdness.

C'mon, Doesn't Bill Goldberg's WWE debut blow this out of the water in terms of crowd reaction I guess I wasn't really thinking about guys who jumped between Big Two. I think the reaction Styles got was comparably huge though. I've seen people say they thought the crowd was dead, I disagree and thought they were very hot. Shame about the show though.

I would say there are four broad approaches to any given text, which you could categorise almost any school into: 1. Focus on text (formalism, see also structuralism, New Criticism, deconstruction, etc.) 2. Focus on context (historicism, see also cultural materialism, archetypal criticism, Marxism of many different stripes) 3. Focus on reader (reader-response theory) 4. Focus on author (humanism, sort of, see also psycholanalysis, sort of) They aren't all necessarily exclusive and you could buddy them up in different ways. But in wrestling terms: 1. Focus on text = focus on matches ... this is Loss. 2. Focus on context = focus on understanding the time and the place, and the audience at the live show, etc ... Dave Meltzer is basically one of these. 3. Focus on reader = focus on your own responses to the match ... various people, Jingus has argued this on the most extreme end. 4. Focus on author = focus on the wrestlers and their input ... closest to this I've seen, I think, is maybe Dylan. I thought typing them out in this way might make it clearer to think about your own approach. My own BIGLAV is some attempt at a holistic approach that tries to take all of the above into account.

My plan to get Roman Reigns over: 1. Fire him. 2. Let him go to the indies. 3. Re-hire him in two years. 4. Watch as fans cheer.

For some reason my mic on Skype turned itself right down. Couldn't be fixed in the edit.

HHH didn't point to the sign, so I think he'll drop it before then.

I remember them being very over.