While it would be difficult to call the “Roman Reigns experiment” a complete and total failure, WWE can’t possibly think it has worked. Over the course of the past two years, WWE has pushed Roman Reigns to the moon and back, and they haven’t seemed to care that the majority of the fans haven’t taken to him. No matter what, he’s going to be booed wherever he goes. Now, the company appears to have come up with a way of handling that situation, and it’s an interesting one.
Triple H is still in support of Roman Reigns and his ability to run WWE as the top guy of the entire promotion. It was recently revealed that Vince McMahon is done with the idea of trying to make Roman Reigns a mega superstar, but he’s just taking things as they come.
Daily Wrestling News is reporting that Vinnie-Mac has a brand new look on things, and it’s very much just a “whatever” approach. This past week on Monday Night RAW , McMahon got his point across through the words of John Bradshaw Layfield at the announce position.
On RAW, Reigns confronted AJ Styles in the main eventtime slot, and it was one of the final big moments before their match tonight at Extreme Rules. As recapped by the WWEwebsite, the end result was a brawlbreaking out between The Bloodline and The Club, which led to Styles getting an uppercut journey out of the ring.
As the fans continued to boo Roman Reigns, Vince McMahon’s thoughts came forth through JBL’s words from the announce table — “If you love him or hate him, you’re very passionate about him.”
This is very much along the lines of how Reigns presented himself in promos after winning the WWE World Heavyweight Title at WrestleMania 32 . He came out to a chorus of boos on the next few episode of Monday Night RAW and let everyone know that “I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a good guy. I’m just the guy.”
Fans still didn’t care.
At this point, it seems as if WWE is taking the mindset that fans are going to keep watching whether they love or hate Roman Reigns, but that isn’t the case at all. In fact, things are getting pretty bad, and WWE should really start to be concerned.
According to Wrestling News World , the ratings for this week’s Monday Night RAW , the go-home show for Extreme Rules , lost a lot of viewers. It had an average viewing audience of 3,190,667 viewers which was down an average of 47,333 viewers from RAW the week before.
Matters weren’t helped this past Monday when viewers went down with each passing hour, as well. From hour one to hour three, almost 500,000 viewers had stopped watching.
This is not the first sign that ratings have been fallingwith Roman Reigns as the champion. Actually, ratings have fallen drastically from this same time last year, and that has been with Reigns as the primary focus of the main event scene.
Vince McMahon may not care how the fans are taking to Reigns now, but he should really care with the plummeting ratings and possibly losing more viewers.
Roman Reigns is the WWE World Heavyweight Champion, and it doesn’t appear as if that is going to change anytime in the near future. Vince McMahon may have given up on trying to get him over, but now he’s just going to let nature take its course. If the fans want to cheer him, great. If the fans want to boo him, so be it. They’re reacting to him and that’s one thing, but it certainly isn’t helping the ratings for WWE’s weekly TV shows.
[Image via WWE]