HerraS posted:

Yes

Food Court Druid posted:

He's not a good wrestler. He's not a bad wrestler.

Ostentatious posted:

Roman Reigns

BrigadierSensible posted:

The match where he loses the title, (whenever that may be), is going to immensely please the crowd and send them home happy, no matter who it is against, and no matter how fuckeried up the finish is. So by that metric he will be good one day.

Cavauro posted:

roman

pressedbunny posted:

He is the 7 booked like a 10 so everyone thinks he's a 5. Or 4, I suppose.

Yorkshire Tea posted:

He's the wrestler.

In all seriousness. He's not a bad wrestler, but he sits in one of the deepest pools of talent that WWE has ever seen, can't talk for poo poo and gets pushed to the top of the company because he has "The Look" or some bullshit. So we justifiably hate the guy because he's far above his station in and bores crowds to death on the regular, to the point that I was more invested in the Zac Ryder vs Miz match on the Raw after mania than I have been in any Roman match for years.

JOHN CENA posted:

I usually don't make any real serious posts on these forums, and granted, I haven't watched a lot of Raw (i've watched two episodes since 2014), but that only adds to my enjoyment of the PPVs, of which I watch all of them. This is gonna be my thoughts on the subject.

Roman Reigns is a good to great wrestler and outside of his matches with Big Show and Kane, his main event matches have been all good, some even outstanding. He plays a great babyface in peril, which as a defending champion makes for real good heat, he has good fire, when he's not cutting promos he has an rear end-kicker aura about him, and I think that a majority of fans are actually behind the curve on him because he is a really dynamic in ring and out of ring performer. Look at the matches he's had with Lesnar, with Rollins, with Dean, with AJ, he's even had good matches with Bray, who himself doesn't have a stellar record. His match with HHH wasn't bad at all, and he was one of the reasons the Shield was as over as they were, because he was the monster of that group.


It really feels like contrarianism and some leftover resentment that Roman got the nod as "the guy" over Daniel Bryan, and with all of the injuries Bryan kept getting, I would have gone with that decision as well and I've been a fan of Bryan's for over a decade. I've been saying forever Roman is good and a good champion. His matches have shown it over and over, and will continue to show. He's already ahead of Cena in terms of match quality when Cena was having his first major run, and he also has a number of great foils to work with which is only going to add to the longevity of his career.

Yeah, he's pushed a lot, but why shouldn't he be? No, they didn't pick Dean who is probably a better promo and a better in-ring guy, but Roman is just as serviceable as he needs to be to be at the level he is. Should Dean be given a chance to run with the ball? He absolutely should, and I think he should have been given a chance before Roman was. Does that mean Roman is just objectively Bad and Should Fail as a main eventer? No, that's stupid, because he's deserving to be in the main event mix.

Sanguinia posted:

Roman has impressive talents as a wrestler, but they're overshadowed in a lot of ways by his peers.

For example, I think Roman's single greatest talent is a natural instinct for timing. He knows just when to react, just when to sell, just when to counter, just when to pop out his superman punch for the coolest looking shot, and that's a very rare and valuable gift. But is he as good at that as the absolute all time master of timing Randy Orton, or somebody with perhaps a lesser ability at timing for moves but a much greater ability for combining it with match psychology to manipulate the crowd like John Cena? Granted they're 15 year veterans at this point, but I would argue they were both better at those things at similar points in their careers to where Roman is now.

I think Roman's also quite good at making his offense look hard-hitting. His spears and apron boot and superman punch and tope and other various spots do have a certain visceral nature to them, and in some of his best matches like against Daniel Bryan or Brock Lesnar or even Bray Wyatt in the Cell he displayed a gift for, lacking a better turn, savagery. He can turn up the level of intensity and violence in a match with ease just using body language and facial expressions, and really make it feel more like a fight than a match. But is he better at that than Kevin Owens or Sami Zayn or Bray Wyatt or Dean Ambrose when he's not phoning it in? Again, those guys have years of experience on him, but based on tapes I've seen of them previously they were ALWAYS better than Roman at those metrics.

Roman is good looking in a traditional sense and beyond that simple handsomeness he has a "good look," a distinctive style that makes him stick in the mind. He also has good physical charisma and facial expressions. But either he doesn't know how to use them instinctively like Seth Rollins or the New Day guys do, or he's so hamstrung by the writers/bookers in how he MUST use them for his "character," (which seems to be trying to combine Aloof Too-Cool Kevin Nash with White Meat Superman John Cena even though those are contradictory) that it absolutely cripples his ability to get himself over on those alone.

And despite those strengths, Roman has terrible TERRIBLE weaknesses. His verbal charisma and talking skills are a black hole that makes AJ Styles look like The Rock, and AJ is infamous for being a bad promo. He promo style is like a carbon-paper copy of people who are much better than him and it makes him that much MORE awful. His ring psychology and generalship are in the toilet, which means that any time he's not wrestling one of the best in the world in those categories his matches are sloppy messes, and this is supposed to be the guy carrying the entire company on his back. His character is a giant mess that breeds resentment and disinterest like roaches, and his presentation continues to try to leech goodwill from The Shield, damaging them as a concept in perpetuity and him as a direct result of that resentment. His moveset is limited and his attempts to expand it have generally been dismal failures, exposing a fundamental lack of skill at the craft that may never be bridged, and while this has never stopped guys like Ultimate Warrior or Hulk Hogan from being mega-stars, the modern audience doesn't like it and that counts for a lot. The best way to make up for a limited moveset is to use feats of strength or technical sequences to make up for them, but Roman is really bad at both of those things, and when you have guys like Cesaro, Styles and Brock Lesnar to compare him to his lacking in those areas stands out even more.

In summation? Roman's not bad, but he's worse than pretty much everybody else that the booking places beneath him. He's a jack of SOME trades, a master of maybe one or two, and a failure at the rest, and he's surrounded by a wide variety of Masters that further expose his weaknesses. I like Roman despite everything, and I'll be the first to admit he's done his part to make a lot of great matches the last few years. But he's not what he should be for the spot he's in.

That's my story, kthanks.

RacistGuidingLight posted:

I didn't catch NXT this week, or any week, cuz NXT is bad, But I thought I'd pop in anyway just to say that I love cum.

Sanguinia posted:

Fenrir posted:

Pretty much my thoughts as well, but you did a better job writing it than I probably would have.