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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 15, 2018 11:40:31 GMT -5
Probably because it kinda worked with Cena. I mean eventually. But Roman's not doing the Merch numbers that Cena is... and from all accounts when he was #2 on the list #3 was right behind him. That’s kind of how it works. 3 is after 2, and somewhere along the line is 4. My point was that Cena has been stated as selling more merchandise than anyone by a WIDE margin (like double). but Roman's margin was only slightly ahead of #3 when he was in the number 2 slot. |
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Post by Tenshigure on Jan 15, 2018 12:03:21 GMT -5
Except Cena's rise was 100% natural, and pushed by the fans. They let him be the rapper, and he got red hot. Cena got to the top spot because the fans demanded it. From the moment he got the rapper gimmick till about November 2005 (Batista's rise), Cena may have been the hottest guy in the company. I really wish people would stop rewriting history when it comes to Cena. The guy was called up WAY too early without a fully established character outside of his Prototype gimmick (thus his vanilla CAW look at the beginning), and was relegated to king of Velocity for the first 6 months of his career. Hell, they almost fired his ass that same year had it not been for Steph going to bat for him. |
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Post by Mid-Carder on Jan 15, 2018 13:27:05 GMT -5
It didn’t work with Cena though. He’s been the top FACE for 12 years and has been consistently booed. Despite what WWE tries to tell us, that’s not a successful face.
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Post by tankisfreemason on Jan 15, 2018 13:34:43 GMT -5
Except Cena's rise was 100% natural, and pushed by the fans. They let him be the rapper, and he got red hot. Cena got to the top spot because the fans demanded it. From the moment he got the rapper gimmick till about November 2005 (Batista's rise), Cena may have been the hottest guy in the company. I really wish people would stop rewriting history when it comes to Cena. The guy was called up WAY too early without a fully established character outside of his Prototype gimmick (thus his vanilla CAW look at the beginning), and was relegated to king of Velocity for the first 6 months of his career. Hell, they almost fired his ass that same year had it not been for Steph going to bat for him. I was watching then and I remember it as a mix of what both of you are saying. Cena wasn’t called up too early, and yes he wasn’t given a chance at first (aside from the Kurt Angle debut) and was going to get cut. He did knock it out of the park with the rapper gimmick, and he was a huge babyface and people cheered him like crazy. Hell, I was marathoning past Rumbles recently and i think it was 05 or 06 when it was down to him and Batista, the crowd was going nuts for Cena. It wasn’t until he was no longer the underdog that the fans were pushing for and became Super Cena that he got the hate that he’s got for a while. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2018 13:36:04 GMT -5
It didn’t work with Cena though. He’s been the top FACE for 12 years and has been consistently booed. Despite what WWE tries to tell us, that’s not a successful face. It depends, even though he gets booed it's mostly been even for a good while but even besides that the thing Cena has that Roman doesn't is when Cena wins a match regardless if people booed him prior, people cheer. Reigns gets booed through the end. |
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The Ichi
Patti Mayonnaise
AGGRESSIVE Executive Janitor of the Third Floor Manager's Bathroom
Posts: 37,713 
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Post by The Ichi on Jan 15, 2018 13:48:51 GMT -5
Except Cena's rise was 100% natural, and pushed by the fans. They let him be the rapper, and he got red hot. Cena got to the top spot because the fans demanded it. From the moment he got the rapper gimmick till about November 2005 (Batista's rise), Cena may have been the hottest guy in the company. I really wish people would stop rewriting history when it comes to Cena. The guy was called up WAY too early without a fully established character outside of his Prototype gimmick (thus his vanilla CAW look at the beginning), and was relegated to king of Velocity for the first 6 months of his career. Hell, they almost fired his ass that same year had it not been for Steph going to bat for him. Pretty sure he meant from his face turn in late 2003 onwards. |
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 15, 2018 15:28:30 GMT -5
It didn’t work with Cena though. He’s been the top FACE for 12 years and has been consistently booed. Despite what WWE tries to tell us, that’s not a successful face. It depends, even though he gets booed it's mostly been even for a good while but even besides that the thing Cena has that Roman doesn't is when Cena wins a match regardless if people booed him prior, people cheer. Reigns gets booed through the end. also a lot of people chant both Let's go Cena and Cena Sucks since it became what you do during Cena Matches. and again Cena was also the top merch mover by miles for years. |
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Fade
Patti Mayonnaise
Posts: 38,650
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Post by Fade on Jan 15, 2018 16:06:15 GMT -5
He's an eccentric, type-A personality, who's 72 years old.
It's like an aging father desperately trying to convince his daughter the man he's picked for her arranged marriage is the right one.
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Post by Hit Girl on Jan 15, 2018 16:20:46 GMT -5
Because he thinks it worked with Cena, except it didn't. Viewers have deserted the company in droves since the Attitude Era, and their relentless push of Cena alienated fans en masse and led the company to sabotage many careers in the process of sacrificing them to Cena.
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Post by Texas Tornado on Jan 15, 2018 16:24:21 GMT -5
Because he’s still mad he had to push Daniel Bryan to the top.
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Post by 2coldMack is even more baffled on Jan 15, 2018 16:24:38 GMT -5
I think he's still really scared if he pushes a wrestler with naturally occuring reactions they will leave like Lesnar did. If he pushes the archetyple company man Cena, and now Roman that isn't going to happen. Right. He wants a guy who's over, but not over enough to leave for greener pastures. Cena's been a....middling pop-culture success, but never to the point where he could "Go Hollywood" like The Rock did. |
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 15, 2018 16:29:42 GMT -5
I think he's still really scared if he pushes a wrestler with naturally occuring reactions they will leave like Lesnar did. If he pushes the archetyple company man Cena, and now Roman that isn't going to happen. Right. He wants a guy who's over, but not over enough to leave for greener pastures. Cena's been a....middling pop-culture success, but never to the point where he could "Go Hollywood" like The Rock did. Granted he hung around longer than Rock did, but Cena is kinda doing that right now. |
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Post by horseface on Jan 15, 2018 17:01:35 GMT -5
They lucked out with Cena in that he was really good at dealing with the mixed and negative reactions. Reigns isn't half as good.
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Post by 2coldMack is even more baffled on Jan 15, 2018 17:09:31 GMT -5
They lucked out with Cena in that he was really good at dealing with the mixed and negative reactions. Reigns isn't half as good. Sheamus had the same problem Reigns is having when they were dead set on HIM being "the guy". |
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Post by lookout on Jan 15, 2018 17:30:31 GMT -5
It has been 3 years of constant booing. Cena was the #1 merch seller and had a lot of fans. Roman still mainly gets booed and has not really put up the merch numbers Cena did, and has gone long periods of not being #1 Cena sold so much and connected with a large portion with the audience. So not turning Cena made sense. But this simply does not apply for Roman. The only reason he has not turned heel or dropped out of the main event scene seems to be because Vince likes him. Heck, it is even obvious Vince has used him to troll the audience with his promos a few times. Why on earth would you do this and still portray him as a face? I don't get it. Only thing i can figure is because he's lost it. No sane promoter would keep doing this...not for this long. I think it's also in part because Honestly i really don't feel like the 1990s/early 2000s vince would do this. The lack of competition has allowed him to stick with whatever or whoever he feels like should be on top...and damned if the fans like it or not. If wcw or someone else was around to truly challenge him, i don't think there's a chance in hell roman would still be being crammed down our throats...as a face no less. |
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Post by HMARK Center on Jan 15, 2018 17:36:04 GMT -5
I keep coming back to WWE not being focused enough on storytelling and narrative: not in their matches, not in their feuds, and not in the way they build their stars up. Somebody like Cena or Reigns getting a few big pops here and there (Cena's pops circa 2004 were admittedly pretty solid throughout the year) doesn't mean those guys are ready for major spots in the company, and it doesn't mean the fans are ready to fully embrace them as top dogs.
It's interesting to me that Austin is one of the few top stars in Vince's tenure who got over in large part thanks to the narrative that he crafted and rode to the top: the story of a wrestler who knew he was great, but constantly felt thwarted by the institutions and traditions that said that a "guy like him" could never be in that spot, and who happened to be enough of a sociopath that the only way he knew how to deal with any of these frustrations was to fight and batter any and everybody, thus leaving him isolated and having to rely on himself to eventually topple those institutions (what he was supposed to accomplish in dethroning Bret, but wound up doing to Michaels, instead). Just more indicative that Vince was more hands off during that time because he knew his ideas weren't working.
Cena really didn't have a story behind his rise; he just got some strong pops in the upper midcard, then one day main evented, won the title, and moved to Raw and beat everybody despite clearly not being all the way ready in terms fo delivering in the ring. There wasn't really anything pointing Roman toward the main event, either; he got to go singles after the Shield breakup, had some poor promos and an injury, then was in the main event of Mania 31. Neither Roman nor Cena played off any pre-existing wrestlers, stood as refutations of existing expectations and tropes, or had some kind of personal hook or narrative that would get fans fully on board with wanting to see them make the jump to the top.
Oddly enough, Bryan had that; similar to Austin, he had the "people like YOU can never be on top!" thing, a build that really began with his 18 second loss and turned into the whole "movement" around him. He had that kind of hook, but since this isn't an era where Vince is hands off, it had to be stopped.
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Post by Starshine on Jan 15, 2018 17:52:31 GMT -5
The thing that I just don't get about this Reigns push is that supposedly they had this all planned out before the guy was even on the shows. He wasn't originally penciled into the Shield, yet he got a spot because they saw it as a vehicle to push him to the top.
What exactly is it about him that's so special in their eyes? I just can't work it out. It would be like if Vince got a boner for Test in 1998 and decided he was going to main event with Austin and Rock come hell or high water.
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Evil Homer
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Evil Homer on Jan 15, 2018 18:10:47 GMT -5
Romans good , but hes not that good . thats something Vince will never understand
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Post by Hit Girl on Jan 15, 2018 18:13:39 GMT -5
It also comes down to impatience. Vince wants a ready made superface as his top guy but doesn't understand that you need to go through the heel stages first. Austin started as a heel. Rock only became a star when he turned heel. Cena got over as a diss rapper, but then stayed face way too long until he became stale. Vince assumes that if Roman is booked like a conquering hero, the fans will accept him. But they won't, and the longer WWE have persisted, the more hostile the fans have become. I think it's reached a point where even if they turned him heel, the fans still wouldn't give a shit.
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Post by A Platypus Rave is Correct on Jan 15, 2018 18:19:32 GMT -5
It also comes down to impatience. Vince wants a ready made superface as his top guy but doesn't understand that you need to go through the heel stages first. Austin started as a heel. Rock only became a star when he turned heel. Cena got over as a diss rapper, but then stayed face way too long until he became stale. Vince assumes that if Roman is booked like a conquering hero, the fans will accept him. But they won't, and the longer WWE have persisted, the more hostile the fans have become. I think it's reached a point where even if they turned him heel, the fans still wouldn't give a shit. you can start out as a face. but more importantly of this was... Reigns did get over as a heel and a face... the problem was as soon as he went solo he had to do more than just be the hot tag guy. besides not really doing that... they also can't decide definitively what Roman's personality should be. cool badass, wacky punster, prankster, white meat babyface... he changes between all of those things seemingly weekly and sometimes multiple times on the same show... not to mention heroes have to struggle. No one wants to watch the hero mow down every obstacle in their path... seemingly never have even the slightest problem with anything. Roman's feuds are pretty much Roman stands tall, roman wins a aface off, Roman stands tall in a beat down, heel attempts to cheat but Roman reverse it and stands tall... and then at the PPV Roman wins with no issues. the hell type of story is that? Even "Super Cena" would end up getting his ass kicked in the lead up to the matches. |
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