A Great WWE Tag Team Everyone Forgets
The recent reception to Roman Reigns has been very positive and while the Tribal Chief has been growing a tad stale due to his never-ending stint with the Universal Championship, his current reputation is light years ahead of what he once suffered as the face of the company.
His predecessor, John Cena, was hated by a sizeable majority of the fans but Reigns was disliked by almost everyone, from the young fans to the adults watching the shadow. Especially the adults as the IWC was more vocal for their hatred of Reigns than any other superstar in modern history.
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John Cena was able to turn the tide with his stellar mic work from time to time. The dude even drew a few cheers against a returning Rock. That speaks volumes about just how talented and charismatic Cena was on the microphone but Reigns was nowhere near his predecessor in that regard.
Reigns Was Booed Mercilessly
He was strong, agile, and athletic but without the speaking prowess, Reigns was booed from one arena to another with no end in sight. The company then intervened and Reigns only garnered more hatred.
In order to get the crowd on the side of Reigns, the company went ahead and booked him as the ultimate underdog, despite all the talk of his supreme innate talent and athletic ability. Entire factions such as The Authority and the League of Nations were brought up for the sole purpose of stacking the odds against the new face of the company.
Sadly, not a single tactic worked. Triple H won the Royal Rumble to a round of thunderous applause. Sheamus cashed in his MITB contract to another shower of gleeful cheers.
A few odd years later, the company presented a storyline where Roman Reigns was a marked man, akin to Austin being run over in the fall of 1999. Someone in the company wanted Reigns out and to this end, said assailant orchestrated a number of attacks on the Big Dog, attempting to run him over and whatnot.
The fans saw this for exactly what this was, a transparent attempt to garner sympathy for Reigns in hopes that he would be cheered by the audience. In contrast with the storyline of Steve Austin which took many months to unravel, Reigns quickly got to the bottom of this mystery all by himself and after tossing Buddy Murphy across the locker room in a badass display of courage and power, Reigns was given the name of Erick Rowan.
Erick Rowan, formerly a part of the Wyatt family, now tagged along with the champion of the environment, Daniel Bryan. The former world champion outright denied any involvement in the attack against Roman Reigns, vouching that his partner, Rowan was not a liar.
Eventually, through the wonders of technology, it came to light that Rowan was indeed the mystery assailant. This caused a rift between Bryan and Rowan and in one of the more hilarious segments of the program, Bryan lashed out against his protégé, demanding him to answer for his crimes while constantly slapping him across the face.
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Reigns was able to get his hands on Rowan at Clash of Champions 2019 but a returning Luke Harper led to Rowan winning the match. Oh, and the reason behind the attack was because Rowan wanted to scare the Big Dog and prove that he was not who used to be and the same, tired shtick of being disrespected. Joy.
The Partnership Was The Silver Lining
Eventually, Rowan turned his back on Bryan as well, joining hands with Harper and blindsiding both Bryan and Reigns on a number of occasions. This led to Reigns and Bryan becoming allies as a means to combat the tag-team of Rowan and Harper. Another transparent attempt to garner a positive reaction for Reigns but fortunately, the short-lived tag-team of Bryan and Reigns was the silver lining of this feud.
For once, Reigns, due to his association with Bryan, was cheered as a hero by the fans. Moreover, the duo actually had quite a bit of chemistry with one another. Of course, Bryan has chemistry with just about everyone but the story of enemies turned unlikely allies worked quite well for Bryan and his new tag-team partner.
The feud between the two tag teams came to a conclusion at WWE Hell in a Cell 2019 in a tornado tag-team. The heels dominated much of the contest until the babyfaces mounted a comeback, with a superman and running knee combo sealing the win for the babyface duo.
In the aftermath of the match, Bryan extended his hand for a shake but Reigns was not too keen at first. Eventually, Reigns did hug it out with his temporary ally to conclude the storyline with a happy ending.
The storyline was convoluted, transparent, and dragged on for far too long but the last-minute tag-team pretty much saved this saga from devolving into a complete disaster.
