An easy out for people who dislike Roman Reigns is to blame Reigns himself for what has happened so far in his career. Some people don’t realize that it is really the booking of Roman that has hurt him in the eyes of the fans and that is why we keep seeing a negative crowd reaction. Well-known wrestling mind Vince Russo recently discussed who is to blame for Reigns not being over with the crowd. He makes some interesting comments about Vince McMahon and his history of booking top guys in specific ways.
Vince Russo on who is to blame for Roman Reigns not being over with the crowd:
“It’s Vince [McMahon]. In Vince’s mind, it’s Bruno. It’s Backlund. Look at his history. He’s done it over and over and over again. Kevin Nash was this killer who beat Bob Backlund in like 8 seconds in Madison Square Garden. I was the editor at the WWF Magazine at the time. Diesel wins the belt. The next thing I know, Vince wants a picture of him on the cover of the WWF Magazine smiling like a Cheshire cat. And I remember arguing with Vince at the time, saying ‘What are you doing? This is not the character.’ And Vince wanted the white bread babyface. From there, it was Shawn Michaels’ turn (Source: WrestlingInc).
Russo continued and said that McMahon wanted guys like Shawn Michaels and The Rock to cut these babyface promos when it didn’t make sense for a character standpoint.
“Here we are with Roman Reigns 25, 30 years later. He’s doing the exact same thing, because Vince, at 70 years old, really believes that the 1970s philosophy is going to work today. It’s all he knows. He’s repeating it over and over again. And there’s nobody there with the balls to say, ‘Vince, this does not work in 2016” (Source: WrestlingInc).
I know that Russo has a bit of a bad name in the wrestling world but it is really interesting to hear his take as someone who used to work behind the scenes of the WWE.
Let us know your thoughts on his comments!
I agree with this. Vince thinks he knows everything about wrestling. You really can’t teach an old dog new tricks. If he’s so determined to hang onto old ways, why not at least bring back one that worked so well? One that helped give WWF its huge success back in the day? Allow the talents a lot more creativity in the development of their own characters. Stop trying to control every single second of every single show. Controlling their every word and action is one thing that’s ruining the product.
True. Case in point, The New Day. They have so much freedom to do what they please and they are currently of the hottest acts today.
As for Vince, its hard for him to understand that he is fucking up because business is booming. How can you tell someone that they are doing a poor job when the company is still gaining enormous profit? Double edge sword