What if WWE's next big thing had their best talker to help him through his growing pains?
Roman Reigns is the chosen one. Out of the crop of recent NXT graduates, he was picked to be the next big star in WWE, and for good reason. He's one of the best athletes and best-looking dudes in the company, crowds were cheering him harder than any other young performer in 2014 and there's no aspect of "being a WWE Superstar" that he's outright bad at.
He's also not yet at the top of the game in a couple of areas. Most importantly, he's still pretty average at cutting scripted promos. Unfortunately, performers are often at the mercy of bad scripts in WWE, but his delivery has still been less than ideal. It's not bad, but considering his status at the top of the card, it could stand to be a whole lot better. Reigns is also, while very good in the ring, not considered by fans to be a truly elite wrestling technician.
The list of guys who have risen to the top of the WWE card without being among the two-to-three best guys in the company at wrestling or acting over the last 20 years is tiny, and the only guys to do it have flopped as main event draws. Hyper-talented athletes with the as-yet unrealized potential to be great actors and workers are usually placed in a pretty high-profile position, but kept out of the top spot until they become spectacular at one or the other. WWE didn't do that with Reigns -- they just rushed him to the top of the card before he was ready. He's going to be fine, because he's one of the best talents the company's brought up in the last 10 years, but he doesn't stand on his own merits as a main event superstar yet.
There are always things that WWE can do to mitigate that issue. This is a scripted television show, after all.
One of them is pairing him with a manager like Paul Heyman, who's so good on the mic that he could convince an audience to boo or cheer for a broomstick. Issue sorted, right? Roman Reigns looks sexy for the camera and does amazing flying dropkicks while Heyman does all the heavy lifting in the promo department.
Heyman is currently the manager for Brock Lesnar, Reigns' WrestleMania 31 opponent. He has Heyman because he's not much of a talker either, but Lesnar's minimalist promo style actually fits his character really well. Newer characters like Reigns need to use the right words to get you interested in what they're doing, but we're interested in Lesnar because he shows up and looks scary. What if Heyman were to turn on Lesnar, or simply align himself with Reigns after he beats Lesnar without any assistance? That would be a good idea, right?
Maybe.
Pro -- Roman Reigns needs a mouthpiece
Watch this horrid Jack and the Beanstalk promo and you'll see what I mean.
Yes, the biggest problem here is the script. Reigns didn't write the script. And he's not really at a point in his career where he can say "f--- your script, I'm doing it my way." But his delivery of this garbage script is still very bad, and makes him sound like an amateur. John Cena and Dean Ambrose salvage awful writing on a near-weekly basis. Reigns isn't good enough to do that.
Not only would Heyman do a much better job of delivering these words than Reigns, but he'd probably be allowed to help write better ones. It's pretty clear that Heyman has some hand in everything that comes out of his mouth, as he should. And don't we want the best promos on the show being used to put over the guy the company thinks is the Cenaesque massive draw of the future?
Seriously, tell me you're not captivated by this dude.
Don't you want to watch and see what happens now? Don't you want to see Heyman and the guys he manages do literally anything? This promo got me excited for a match between CM Punk and Ryback even though I know that I've never enjoyed Ryback matches and that CM Punk had one foot out the door of the company. If he can do that for Ryback, who was solidly midcard at the time and who isn't as good of a wrestler as Reigns, what can he do for Reigns?
The prospect of Reigns as a mostly silent monster that Heyman unleashes when it's most advantageous is super appealing. In feuds with guys like Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins, it would be some of the best wrestling TV we've seen in this era of WWE.
Con -- This ship has already sailed
Roman Reigns is in the main event of WrestleMania. This isn't changing. He won the Royal Rumble, he beat Daniel Bryan at WWE Fastlane and he's going to wrestle Brock Lesnar on Sunday. The entire build has already happened and there's no going back.
Should WWE have stuck Heyman or someone of similar ability with Reigns as his mouthpiece three months ago? Yes, probably, but they didn't. Now they'll have a full year of television to let Reigns talk on before the next edition of WrestleMania. If he's already gone through a WrestleMania build without a manager, we might as well let him get a bunch of practice in on the stick before his next big push.
The post-WrestleMania period is a time for WWE to start new storylines by doing stuff like breaking up The Shield, and in recent history, the champion has ended up in a placeholder feud with fringe main event guys like Ryback and Kane who can take a couple of losses before WWE's ready to set the wheels in motion for SummerSlam's big feud. They can use this time to get Reigns a lot of practice rather than sticking him with a mouthpiece, something they should have done three months ago if they were going to do it.
Plus, it's not like Reigns is irredeemable as a talker. He's just not that great yet. He's had plenty of solid promos. The one he cut on Seth Rollins after the breakup of the Shield was good.
Was he outshined by Ambrose here? Sure, but Ambrose was also one of the most compelling talkers in independent wrestling for a couple of years before signing on with WWE. Reigns went right from wrestling training to WWE developmental. He's less than 18 months removed from never saying more than one sentence at a time. This is a very rapid rate of improvement.
Reigns also seems a lot more comfortable in any situation where he's not standing in a ring by himself, holding a microphone, cutting a promo. He's very good in improvised back-and-forth, interview segments and taped promos. He's just bad at the memorizing and reciting a script as if it's an off-the-cuff, natural interaction. It stinks, but A. he's learning, B. WWE should probably do a lot less of that anyway, because almost no one is good at it.
There's a compelling story to tell in Heyman aligning with Reigns, and it would certainly make Reigns a more entertaining TV character in the short term, but is it a good move for WWE? Probably not. Now that they've gone through with a mediocre WrestleMania build, they can let Reigns sink or swim on his own merits between now and next year's Mania season.
Reigns will improve on the mic if WWE lets him, and they should let him.
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