LogFAQs > #876496381

The Wave Master posted...

Roman needs a heel run and could succeed at it, but Vince just isn't going to let that happen. Why? I'm not even sure because he was the heel in this feud. He is well on his way to being Cena Jr

You answered your own question - they absolutely want him to be Cena Jr. So much so that people have been accusing of trying to "clone" Cena via Roman for years now.

Cena, for all that "smart" fans tend to dislike him and for all that he gets a minor undercurrent of boos at live events (see also, the crowd booing while he was proposing, to the point of them having to mute crowd noise), sells a metric fuckton of merchandise. And for the WWE, that's a pretty major indicator of how "over" they consider someone (see also, the reason why the New Day keeps having a strong presence on Raw). They don't really care if something like 25-30% of the audience is shitting on Cena as long as the other part is still buying his merch and going to see him in movies.

In Roman's case, he actually sells fairly well when it comes to T-shirts and the like, and he has the big strong muscle idiot look that Vince loves so much, AND he's related to the Rock (a shame he doesn't seem to have inherited any of his cousin's charisma), so the WWE is pretty happy with him. Their assumption is that if they keep pushing him as hard as they have been, and basically keep giving him the traditional babyface booking, he'll eventually get over enough for them to benefit from him in the role of #1 face in the company even if a minority of the crowd continues to hate him.

The real problem is that, whereas Cena might be generating something like a 30% negative/70% positive reaction, Roman's closer to the reverse. And with the crowd reaction so strongly against him, they keep feeling the need to mute all the boos - which makes the crowd sound utterly dead for every Roman match (which means the home audience is always going to feel like he's a dud in every match). Or worse, people notice the manipulation going on and then knee-jerk turn on him because most people don't like it when they notice they're being lied to. Add to that the fact that the constant face push is probably alienating more people than it's winning over (see also, "Rocky Maivia"'s first run as a smiling happy-go-lucky third-generation wrestler babyface), .

But the WWE have always had a sense of knowing what the fans want better than the fans do (along with a stubborn unwillingness to bend), and it's only gotten worse since Hunter and Stephanie took over (to the point of multiple little "fuck you" moments to the crowd where they're pretty much straight-up taunting their own audience because they know there's no real competition to worry about losing fans to). And because of that, they'll probably keep pushing Roman until he's utterly loathed by the fans, and damaged to the point where he can't really be salvaged at all.

A good, strong heel turn could absolutely revitalize him and potentially win fans over, but as is, he's like an anchor made of turd dragging every show he's on down.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family