Roman Reigns

[Jmare007]

14 hours ago, Reel said:

I don't know if I necessarily agree that his matches have dipped, and I think the Cesaro match was actually one of his weaker singles matches of this run. I thought the Drew match was really good, the Sami match was very good, I liked the Cody match and I'm a low voter on Cody, the stuff with KO and Lesnar was strong. Really, I thought the Cesaro match, and the fact that nothing really came out of it for Cesaro, really hurt him in my eyes. He's one of the only guys who has worked with Roman in this run and came out on the other side in a worse spot. 

 

I agree with all of the bolded. But Roman was someone that had "great" matches and I haven't seen one from him in a while. At the same time I recognize he got better and better at character work and leaning into simple things to get big reactions. I think the Zayn match, while being very good, had all the makings for a classic but it didn't get there, and it kinda felt like the didn't want to go there as the story called for something else. That's why I think this Tribal Cheif run is interesting to judge.

One thing  his matches tend to be way too long for the style he's working them, imo. Most of the guys that mastered the "less is more" approach didn't have a lot 30+ minute matches and current Roman takes like 10-15 minutes to get things going.

Also, his matches with Braun were simple as fuck and didn't have anything complicated, they had a less is more approach too, and those were fucking awesome.

[Reel]

I think that all of those bolded matches are on the same level as everything outside the very tip-top of Roman's matches. Outisde of the WM31 match, and one of the Shield/Wyatt matches, I would say the Drew, Sami, and Cody stuff is on the same level of the AJ stuff or the Bryan stuff. 

I'm not really interested in relitigating the Sami/Roman mudfight, but I agree that if everything in that match was exactly the same, but Sami won, it would have been incredible, but that has nothing to do with Roman the wrestler, outside of the usually top guy politics to remain on top. So, maybe the match could have been better, but I think the one thing you can point to that would improve that match, isn't ultimately on the shoulders of Roman or Sami.

As for the length of matches, I love a short match, and I do think you could criticize the Roman main events of being bloated and overbooked, but I personally don't think any of the matches have overstayed their welcome or gone too long. 

[Tetsujin]

He has become one of the best I've seen at working the crowd, at least in a WWE environment. Always had a superb selling and great offense. I'm not a fan of the guy and before turning heel I couldn't stand it because of the booking, but damn does he has a case for a top 100.

[Microstatistics]

The best ace in WWE history (not counting Austin whose tenure was too short).

The Shield is one of the great modern factions and so he already had an enviable tag match/trios resume early into his career. Late 2014-Early 2018 was his athletic peak as a singles wrestler and he was a Top 10 worker in the world in that period in spite of the noxious crowd engagement. Perhaps the Tribal Chief era matches have been less than the sum of their parts due to the dawdling starts and monotonous interference-laden finishes but I appreciate the overarching storytelling elements. 

The quality of his offense and in-ring attention to detail put him miles ahead of someone like Cena. He possesses generational charisma as well and you can understand why he was the chosen one from pretty much Day 1, even if the process of consolidating that was an ugly and sometimes misguided one. Still, taken cumulatively, he is Top 50 contender.

 

[EnviousStupid]

Recently I went through an old March Madness bracket for "The Greatest WWE Wrestler Ever" and saw him against Shawn Michaels. Now, I must confess, I am a fan of most of the Shawn's big classic matches, however I really struggled to rank him above Reigns. For one, Shawn's case on this topic leans a lot on his peaks, but the week-to-week wrestling and overall consistency isn't there in my eyes the way it is for Reigns. The Shield run is obviously chalked full of great tags and trios matches until their breakup. What's less accepted is his singles work from 2015-2018 and that when not burdened by the likes of Jericho, Wyatt, or supremely awful booking, he was reliably great in all sorts of roles that were thrusted onto him. Whether it be as a badass running through tons of guys at once, working on top against smaller underdogs while not undercutting himself technically as a face, or being the sympathetic figure in his selling, offense and fire in the face of monsters. There's a breadth of versatility in his performances that I doubt Shawn was ever full capable of, and he had many more years to work with in comparison. All of this during the time when Roman was getting John Cena-levels of heat regularly from a significant enough portion of their crowds. That's a lot of pressure to work under in that kind of environment, and he did better than I think anyone could've realistically expected for the time. That's another thing he has over Shawn, who had plenty of tantrums and "controversy" that tarnished potentially great matchups or feuds without as much backlash from the audience. 

[fxnj]

On 11/24/2023 at 12:08 PM, Microstatistics said:

The best ace in WWE history (not counting Austin whose tenure was too short).

The Shield is one of the great modern factions and so he already had an enviable tag match/trios resume early into his career. Late 2014-Early 2018 was his athletic peak as a singles wrestler and he was a Top 10 worker in the world in that period in spite of the noxious crowd engagement. Perhaps the Tribal Chief era matches have been less than the sum of their parts due to the dawdling starts and monotonous interference-laden finishes but I appreciate the overarching storytelling elements. 

The quality of his offense and in-ring attention to detail put him miles ahead of someone like Cena. He possesses generational charisma as well and you can understand why he was the chosen one from pretty much Day 1, even if the process of consolidating that was an ugly and sometimes misguided one. Still, taken cumulatively, he is Top 50 contender.

 

Well said. Count me as another fan of that 2014-2018 run. Sucks that his Tribal Chief run doesn't touch his best from that period, but whatever.

[NintendoLogic]

I agree that Roman's 2015-2018 run was consistently strong (I can't give him too much credit for the Shield years because he was largely hidden and protected by the six-man format and he looked pretty lost in most of his singles matches from that period), but the Tribal Chief run has been actively awful from an in-ring standpoint. I can't help but wonder if his last bout with leukemia robbed him of much of his athleticism and necessitated filling his matches with smoke and mirrors.

[KawadaSmile]

I think the Tribal Chief run still managed to produce some great, great stuff. I really enjoy the Logan Paul, Cesaro, Rey and the Triple Threat against Edge and Bryan. The tag against The Usos is top tier.

The biggest issue is that it's a really low volume run. Despite having great presence and having the crowd engaged from the get go, the run just doesn't have a bunch of matches. 

[funkdoc]

i feel like either you absolutely love this guy or you see him as a system quarterback.  Which you could probably say about a bunch of WWE main-eventers, but he's been more divisive than most especially given the nature of his matches in more recent years...

[Kadaveri]

Roman's an increasingly weird case because the period where I think he's a Top 15 worker in the world was 2015-18 when half the internet insisted he sucked. That's where the bulk of his case is made to me, even if his contribution to The Shield is a bit underrated at this point. 2019-21 he's still pretty good at times, though the Bloodline stuff can get pretty grating with his stopping in the middle of matches to deliver his monologues. But it's really his huge run as the Ace of a booming WWE in 2022-24 that throws everything off, it's by far his most successful run where he's given tremendous opportunities, but that's the run where this guy just sucks. I liked the Brock Summerslam match a lot but other than that it's the most boring Ace run in WWE history to me. He insists on slowing every match to a crawl whenever it looks like it might be getting interesting, and the constant Bloodline interference and shenanigans just becomes a bit of a joke before long.