To get
business out of the way: Almost every single match on the card ranged
from good to very good, though I wouldn't call any of them instant
classics like I did with Reigns' cell match last month. The booking
behind the matches made many of the results predictable (that the
bracket managed to kill a singles push for Kalisto is especially
worthy of reprimand, Cesaro slightly less so given his recent
injury,) but the quality of the matches worked ended up making that
more or less irrelevant, especially since most of the matches had
“the right” endings from a booking perspective. Originally I'd've
booked Owens to beat Ambrose so Reigns could feud with Owens, which
continues their history from the #1 Contendor's Tournament from
before Rollins' knee injury, but given the swerve cash-in ending,
Ambrose and Reigns fighting a clean face vs. face match for the title
was the smart move.
Highlights
for me included: Del Rio showing up to work and putting on a really
physical match with Reigns that far exceeded my expectations for the
US Champion who's run so far has been marked with spotty, slow
matches.
As well,
Charlotte worked her best match as Women's Champion thus far, with
the progression of the match naturally creating the needed pace
without needing the forced drama of kayfabe injuries that make
finishing with the Figure-Eight nonsensical. Paige also showed off
some very natural and well-studied heel work in the ring, taunting
her opponent, the audience, and brutalizing Charlotte with submission
maneuvers and hard hits. Charlotte's own offense was aggressive in
nature, including an attempted pin with her knee on Paige's throat,
but I think logic would make that excusable given the lengths Paige
went to to question Charlotte's ability and credibility. This feud is
probably ending here after the faux pas on RAW
about Charlotte's family, but this match may have actually been the
highlight match for those focused mostly on technical ring work.
As well,
WWE successfully bit the bullet and resisted the temptation to make
either of their top babyfaces turn heel in the main event, which
would've been career-threatening for both men, incredibly obvious,
and incredibly short-sighted.
The one
match that didn't have the right ending was The Brothers of
Destruction vs. Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper. I'm not sure what Braun
Strowman did to piss people off backstage, but he got buried hard
tonight, and Bray Wyatt's credibility as a heel took a huge hit yet
again in a match that he and Strowman both really
needed to win and also that Undertaker really needed
to lose (and I mean he needed to eat the pin) to make stakes for what
will likely be his final Wrestlemania
match. Last month Wyatt could disregard match outcomes as he
reorganized his Family, but this match made the entire family look
weak. All of this only amplifies what I talked about last month:
Undertaker won't be on RAW
tomorrow and he won't work a match at TLC, the Royal Rumble, or
Fastlane, the roster is hurting for credible heels, and older
wrestlers on WWE's roster have done a horrible, horrible job putting
over new stars who need wins a lot more than they do.
With all of
that out of the way, I present to you:
Theses
on Roman Reigns in The Main Event.
I:
How Human Voices Work
I'm doing a lot of generalization here,
but stick with me. Grown women and children have naturally higher
voices than grown men do. Children occupy an alto-soprano range
voice, with girls capable of reaching the treble range and boys
capable of reaching the soprano range, and while women's voices lower
as they age, their voices remain naturally high, also tending to
occupy an alto-soprano range (typically the Soprano I range, with a
rare few being capable of retaining Soprano II range as they age.)
Men, however, reach down into the countertenor, baritone, and bass
ranges. For any number of reasons, these tones, and thus, these lower
voices, more easily project across a wider range, which, combined
with the tendency for mean to speak louder, means that grown men are
more easily heard.
Thus, it must be noted than when you
hear Roman Reigns get booed (or John Cena), he is never being booed
nearly as universally as one might think. This was on display during
Reigns' barn-burner HIAC match against Bray Wyatt last month,
wherein we heard the noted “Cena split”, where the higher voices
of the audience, the women and children, chanted “Let's go Roman!”
while the deeper and louder voices of the audience chanted “Roman
Sucks!”
In short: if you think WWE going with
Reigns as a main-eventer is stupid because he's getting booed, I
refer you to the above. The WWE does a lot of stupid things. They
don't put belts on people who don't draw or make merch money.
This is to say nothing of the fact that
in the internet age, when there is more backstage reporting than ever
before, babyfaces being booed is pretty much inevitable, because the
booing itself is a political act mostly meant to perform the supposed
hardcore-ness of the wrestling fans who do it. The booing doesn't say
“this guy's a jerk, he should lose” or even “this guy isn't
good” (though it does say that) but mostly “I'm not getting what
I specifically want right now,” and aside from possibly the return
of Daniel Bryan (whose push towards Wrestlemania XXX played on
these internet politics) and thrusting him back into the main event,
pretty much nothing would ever silence those boos, and WWE does well
to ignore them while listening to the kids who will continue to be
their most dedicated fans.
II
: On The Possibility of Ambrose or Reigns Turning Heel
I'll talk about Ambrose later down but
we need to focus on Roman first, because there are a number of
levels, almost too many to write about, on which the concept of the
Roman Reigns heel turn simply does not work.
First:
it's what the Rock did. And as I've discussed before, the “Samoan
Heritage” angle is not going to get Roman over, partially because
of vile racism, and mostly because for the brief moment that WWE did
highlight his Samoan heritage and pointed out his relationship to The
Rock, people believed that he was only getting pushed because of his
relationship to The Rock, something that can only get you heat. As
well: Rock 2.0 (which is ultimately how people would view Heel
Reigns, regardless of the character he performed, because of the
expectation that he will follow a similar character arc to The Rock,
because Nostalgia) is not a sellable character beyond nostalgia, and
is not something that WWE can rely on for someone they want to make
into their next long-term babyface while John Cena slides back down
to the midcard. For Reigns to be The Man he has to be his own man,
and turning him heel would undo most of the work done to establish
him as a separate identity from his relatives.
As
well, Roman's key weakness (which he has been steadily improving) is
his mic work. For any number of reasons, a babyface can afford to
have less-than-stellar mic work, but a heel needs to be able to talk
for days. They need to be able to talk shit. They need to be able to
rile up a crowd. The only heat Roman has is with smarks who hate him
for whatever god-forsaken reason, and he gets booed during his promos
precisely because for the longest time his promos were very weak.
(That they have notably improved has had little effect on those who
boo him at live events, which is as unsurprising as it is
disappointing.)
On top
of that, Roman's moveset, while hard-hitting and slam-oriented, is
ill-suited towards heel work. This is not to say that he couldn't
learn the submission moves and limb-specific work that would be
required of him as a heel, but suffice to say that his in-ring work
as it exists is not
already well-suited towards him being a heel.
In
short, Roman would be ineffective as a heel in a way that he has not
proven ineffective as a babyface. This brings up an uncomfortable
truth for the IWC to confront: what they see as being desperately
necessary out of Roman because they believe that Roman gets booed
because people hate him is actually incredibly risky. If Reigns
doesn't work as a heel (and he won't) he has to do a lot of work to
turn back face, and that quite simply may not work with the fans he
has, particularly children, who may find it difficult to forgive him.
He may only be a few years old in the main roster, but for good or
ill, Roman Reigns is already John Cena, and if WWE wants him to be
John Cena, in terms of being their hero for children, they cannot
make him a heel.
Ambrose,
on the other hand, is frankly just an incredibly obvious heel, who
might actually excel in that role. However, a turn for him now serves
to sever one of the few dramatic bits of humanity on WWE TV that has
proven resonant with fans of Ambrose and Reigns: the friendship
shared by the both of them. (That breaking up that friendship also
delays the reuniting of the SHIELD should not go unnoticed of
course.) Moreover, Dean Ambrose may be able to effectively work and
talk as a heel, but it is very likely that his heel persona would be
dealing in some incredibly offensive stereotypes about mentally ill
people, given that his already uncomfortable “Lunatic Fringe”
merchandise (that he rarely ever wears) already plays off of it. On
top of everything else, he is already a well liked babyface, and
while he is really in need of a hot feud to put him back in the
spotlight, I personally think it makes more sense for him to be
wrestling for the IC or US belt while he waits to be put back into
the main event (where he definitely belongs after Reigns' next title
reign comes to an end.)
III:
The Match Itself
In
the moment the match felt obviously rushed because what could've been
a 20 or 30-minute main event was forced down to 10 to fit in Sheamus'
cash-in, but this was a well-constructed 10-minute match that
featured my favorite developing feature of Roman Reigns: his tendency
to use his high-impact moves sparsely and intelligently while working
around his opponents offense (as well as simply absorb it, Reigns can
eat a lot
of finishers on PPV.) At
Hell in A Cell,
this resulted in a matchup that had more one-sided paces, with Reigns
dominating early, Wyatt getting the advantage only with weapons, and
then Reigns managing to counter a number of Wyatt's in-ring moves to
close out the match. Here, it resulted in a more even matchup with
counters abounding on both sides as Ambrose's speed occasionally
overwhelmed Roman's defense, as well as his unusual reversals of
momentum on the ropes and apron. As well, being top guys, both
managed to absorb at least one finisher from each other, with Ambrose
kicking out of a Spear earlier in the going. Ultimately, as
deeply-underrated commentator Michael Cole said, it came down to the
last man with the ball. Ambrose went off the turnbuckle and winded up
for a big move, and Reigns hit him suddenly with the spear for the
pin. For a moment, Roman Reigns was your World Heavyweight Champion.
It was not to last.
IV:
On Consistent Storytelling and Metatext
Roman
Reigns' loss to Sheamus tonight was heartbreaking, and genuinely
tragic in structure. Allowing himself a brief moment to vent his
frustrations with how opportunity has been stolen from beneath him
despite effort upon effort, Reigns rejected to have his hand raised
by Triple-H and Speared the COO, at which point he was immediately
Brogue Kicked by the Irishman, who immediately cashed in the Money in
the Bank Contract. Reigns kicked out of the first finisher, but he
ate a second almost immediately and that put him down. Sheamus is
your World Heavyweight Champion, and he doesn't deserve to be there.
This
is where we hit the consistent drama and the metatext: Roman Reigns
spearing Triple-H is not representative necessarily of beef with
Triple-H, but of Reigns' frustrations with WWE as a structure. How
the inherent unfairness of the Money in the Bank briefcase lead to
him being screwed at Wrestlemania
XXXI
and how shoddy officiating led to his failure to achieve retribution
by using that briefcase himself, and then Triple-H had the gall to
offer him a place in the Authority despite having never shown him any
love before, not to mention causing the betrayal of his once-friend
Seth Rollins. It's also about how WWE has mismanaged Roman Reigns.
How they screwed up his push towards WMXXXI
and his characterization basically since the breakup of the SHIELD.
How they've managed to make something as simple as making Roman
Reigns a main event superstar and screw it up, just like they've
screwed it up with so many guaranteed winners before. For fans of
Reigns, seeing him Spear Triple-H is satisfying on a number of levels
because of all of these factors both inside and outside of kayfabe.
That
Spear also represents a minor betrayal of the sort of values that
Reigns is intended to embody as a babyface, as deserved as it is. It
was a display of hubris, and it also betrayed the sort of calm Reigns
has portrayed. It's the kind of short-term and short-sighted
satisfaction that one is not supposed to strive for as a babyface.
And
as punishment, Reigns was cashed-in on, again, and lost to Sheamus,
the man who he lost the MiTB contract to after deserving to win it so
obviously. (Note: this would be a great setup for a feud if Sheamus
was even remotely threatening as a heel, or entertaining as a
wrestler.) Yet again, Roman worked so hard to get where he got to,
and lost it all because as tough as he is, and as talented as he is,
he's only human. And this time it even happened again, during a title
match, with a Money In The Bank cash-in. And he lost it to Sheamus, a
total jobber who's been an absolute afterthought for most of the
year, and who totally deserves it because he's a lazy in-ring worker
and an at-best uninspired talker who's W-L record can never back up
the bark. (Something that I can't help now but think was planned as a
way to make his cash-in win as much of a swerve as possible.) The
consistency of that is pretty admirable.
It's
also smart: Roman has been slowly regaining popularity throughout the
year because he's continued to work hard and yet continually lose on
a number of occasions, and nothing else builds fan sympathy easier.
I'd have to run the numbers again, but since Mania,
Roman has barely more than a 50/50 win-rate on PPV, and that's only
after two consecutive PPV wins these past two months. And while his
sudden push to win the title here felt a little rushed, it now makes
a lot of sense since we're learning that satisfaction is likely going
to be delayed until at least TLC,
though I think for pure excitement WWE shouldn't pull the trigger on
that until the Royal
Rumble
in January. Last year's event, though the Rumble itself was obviously
a huge disappointment, had an air of real excitement in the
triple-threat between Cena, Rollins, and Lesnar, as we were left
predicting who might win the Royal Rumble, as well as wondering who
might be the Champion, leaving the Mania
card itself totally empty. With smarter and less predictable booking
(I know, I'm asking a lot) WWE could really capitalize on a similar
setup again in January.
All
in all, I really enjoyed Survivor
Series,
and, while I think Sheamus' reign should not be long, I do think that
WWE showed a lot of restraint here by not making Reigns champion and
by avoiding the obvious heel turns they could've created for
short-lived drama. That makes it unbearably “safe” for some, but
to me, sometimes “safe” just means smart.
-
From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, I'm Austin C. Howe.
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