03/02/15 Raw: Your Moment of Zen

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by chronoxiong

The stuff with Roman Reigns is not looking good. The fans are not buying into him. Reactions are bad. This is getting ugly.

On the contrary, I get the strong impression that the mainstream WWE audience has already embraced him. Smarky crowds are never going to play nicely with WWE's golden children (Exhibit A: the crowd singing during John Cena's entrance), but when Vince McMahon wants to make a star, he generally succeeds.

[Majingir]

Quote: Originally Posted by almostbobsaget

Honestly the crowd is what makes or breaks Raw for me every week. If the product completely sucked but the crowd was completely in to it last this week's crowd I would be more engaged. The #Axelmania segement is a perfect example of this.

Part of reason why some past stuff can get overrated at times. Don't get me wrong,there's lots of stuff in past which was real great regardless of crowd reaction, but crowd made it better. Crowds can turn an average moment into a great one, or like we see in WWE today,they can make a great moment seem just average.

[kingkilla56]

Quote: Originally Posted by almostbobsaget

Honestly the crowd is what makes or breaks Raw for me every week. If the product completely sucked but the crowd was completely in to it last this week's crowd I would be more engaged. The #Axelmania segement is a perfect example of this.

If only every crowd was full of rabid fans that are willing to get behind anything they see in the ring just for the sake of fun. Newark NJ is one of the good ones.

Imagine Axelmania coming out in Tulsa Oklahoma. Even the crickets would be silent.

[dubcity]

They did it to themselves. Once the company reached a certain level of worth, and they went PG, they decided to micro-manage and control talent to play it safe. Hard to blame crowds for being cold when the product is often so vanilla. Maybe if we were still in the late 1980s to early 1990s they could get away with it.

[TheShizNo1]

PG has nothing to do with it...

[bigbob]

It's to the point that I've accepted the fact that PG played little part in Vince just ****ing up wrestling for us.

[SmashMan]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

On the contrary, I get the strong impression that the mainstream WWE audience has already embraced him.

Do you think that they've embraced him enough, though?

I don't think anyone here (aside from the guy you quoted, maybe?) would doubt that fans like Reigns, but do they like him the same as they do/did other guys in the "top guy" position? I don't think so - at least not yet. He's not getting the pure momentum from a crowd to really put it over the top.

People pop for him when they're supposed to pop for him (music hits, finishing moves, etc..) but they don't seem totally invested in him as a whole just yet. And again I say "yet", because I have no doubt that he can get there one day.