Roman Reigns: Still ‘The Guy,’ But WrestleMania Moment Is In Doubt

Roman Reigns is still the WWE’s choice to be the “future face” of the company, but his WrestleMania moment may be in doubt following a less than stellar performance at SummerSlam.

Reigns has always struggled with his promo work — not to an embarrassing degree, but then, you can’t really count on him to carry a company with his mic skills either. He has “the look,” but as a singles competitor, he’s yet to find his groove, and that’s concerning for some in Stamford.

After his match with Randy Orton at SummerSlam, the concerns have grown among fans — not to an alarming degree, but they’re there.

During their showdown, the biggest pops of the night came courtesy Orton, a veteran who has been buried somewhat in an angle where he’s played lackey to The Authority.

Orton lost the match, but you could feel audience interest waning for Roman Reigns throughout, and the Los Angeles crowd just didn’t seem like they were behind him as much as previous arenas were going in to the last few events.

Of course, there are eight months between now and March 29, 2015, and truthfully, Reigns is not so far off from being “ready” that he can’t make up ground in the interim.

In fact, according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, he is still planned to take the belt from Brock Lesnar as things stand. Meltzer’s report, reproduced here via Rajah, had this to say:

Regarding rumors that Roman Reigns may challenge Brock Lesnar next for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship after the upcoming WWE Night Of Champions pay-per-view, that appears to not be the case.

WWE officials are reportedly still looking to hold off on Reigns winning the WWE title until next year’s WrestleMania.

Reigns is still viewed within WWE as “the chosen one,” but the idea behind his push right now is for him to slowly rise to the top and having him lose to Lesnar at this point would be counterproductive.

WWE is still looking to have Reigns win the title at WrestleMania 31, giving him his big WrestleMania moment and fully capitalizing on his push to the top.

Unfortunately for Roman Reigns, even if WWE sticks with this plan, his “moment” may not be a moment at all because for it to be truly special, the fans have to be behind you 100 percent (or close to it).

Presently, it seems the crowd would rather get behind Dean Ambrose.

But then, WWE usually doesn’t care what fans want as evidenced in the recent reveal that they planned to bury Daniel Bryan at SummerSlamjust a few months after acquiescing to the Yes Movement and veering away from their plans of pushing Batista to the top of the pecking order.

What do you think, readers? Will WWE hold to the worst kept secret in professional wrestling and put the belt on Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 31?