Roman Reigns enters WrestleMania 39 as WWE’s most undermined star

With WrestleMania 39 set to kick off on April 1, and Polygon contributor Abraham Josephine Riesman’s new book Vince McMahon, Ringmaster and The Unmaking of America set to enter the ring on March 28, we’re spending the week grappling with pro wrestling — and everything it’s shaped.

There are two ways of reading Roman Reigns’ go-to taunt, “Acknowledge me.”

The first is as the WWE wrestler intends it: As he said it to Jey Uso in 2020 and to everyone who has stepped to him since, “acknowledge me” is a demand, an order to recognize Reigns as the Tribal Chief, the Head of the Table, or the Big Dog, if nostalgia is your thing. It’s what Paul Heyman does when he cowers and says, “Yes, my Tribal Chief,” or goes into his long-standing “reigning, defending” bit. It’s what the Bloodline does when they carry out Reigns’ orders or back down from him.

That is the last thing WWE fans want to do when Roman Reigns appears in the wrestling arena.

But that wasn’t always so. A second read of Reigns’ catchphrase shades his role as the most important wrestler currently in WWE, and arguably the world. Beneath the armor of his tough-guy swagger, his deliberately paced promos, his impressive list of title defenses, and a two-and-a-half-year run as WWE’s top champion, a run that saw him unify the Universal and WWE Championships at last year’s WrestleMania 38, is a plea: Recognize me.

Roman Reigns, real name Joe Anoaʻi, was supposed to become WWE’s top babyface in 2015. That was a big deal — WWE is driven by babyfaces, the good guys, and being on top of that pile means being the focus of WWE’s storytelling, its top box-office attraction, and acting as its most visible standard-bearer. You may not know anything about wrestling. However, you might know some names of some wrestlers.

With John Cena, Reigns’ predecessor in this role, drifting away from the WWE, Reigns had been built up as well as any heir-apparent could hope for as one-third of The Shield with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose (now All Elite Wrestling’s Jon Moxley). Beginning as henchmen for established acts like CM Punk and Triple H, The Shield’s magnetic personalities and penchant for wild six-man tag-team matches made them one of the hottest acts in the company, arguably one of WWE’s greatest creations. After WWE Raw in June 2014 they were at their peak, and split. Having beaten Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton, and a parting Dave Bautista), Rollins betrayed his friends, hitting Reigns in the back with a chair and taking his place at Triple H’s side.

Dean Ambrose was present in the ring but Reigns grabbed the first knife. Rollins established himself as WWE’s future chief antagonist with one swipe of a steel stool. Rollins knew that Reigns would be his opponent, and that The Guy would be their rival. Their feud would define an era.

The problem is that WWE fans haven’t much appreciated being told who The Guy is since Shawn Michaels’ first “aw shucks” reign through the WWF Championship in 1996, which featured some incredible matches, but ended with Michaels’ hometown crowd in San Antonio cheering for and fistbumping Sid Vicious en route to his win at the 1997 Royal Rumble. Since the end of the Hulkamania era, WWE audiences have been somewhat predisposed to love the villain: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, and John Cena, the WWE’s three biggest post-Hulk Hogan stars, were ushered into babyface roles because fans would not stop cheering for them despite being heels.

Roman Reigns is not as fortunate. He kept his word as a third member to The Shield. However, Rollins was portrayed as the crank, Ambrose as the madman, and Reigns as the man you thought would win the title. But there was one problem: Vince McMahon didn’t give Reigns anything other than knowledge about his future success. Tagging Reigns as The Guy was an invitation for the company’s loudest fans to align themselves against him, and why not? He still had The Shield’s music, he was still wearing his Shield gear, and after winning the 2015 Royal Rumble, The Rock, Reigns’ cousin, came out and anointed him in Philadelphia, one of wrestling’s most judgmental crowds. But it didn’t work out.

The dissolution of The Shield began a long stretch of Reigns’ career where as the chosen one who McMahon could never choose. The career limbo was akin to the long, sad decline of Lex Luger’s prospects in WWF 20 years earlier, only there was no clear option to take Reigns’ place, as Bret Hart ultimately did for Luger in 1994. Reigns fell in the main match of Wrestlemania 31, 2015 when Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase in the middle to his predestined conquest Brock Lesnar. Reigns’ first WWE Championship tenure was ended five minutes later when Sheamus cashed in his briefcase.

WWE’s booking was in the wilderness at this point — Cena was transitioning to Hollywood, Daniel Bryan was injured, and Reigns was in a state of perpetual rebuild. None of this was helped by the company’s overreliance on part-timers like Brock Lesnar and Triple H. Money in the Bank 2016 marked Reigns’ first clean loss since his 2013 call-up to the main roster, but in terms of momentum, he had little to show for that on-paper dominance. The night after WrestleMania 33 in 2017, in which he beat The Undertaker in the main event, Reigns opened Raw by standing in the ring for an entire segment, getting booed every time he raised the microphone to his lips and receiving chants of “GO AWAY.” He took all of this, said, “This is my yard now,” and left.

The definition of a WWE babyface isn’t set in stone. Looks, charisma, in-ring ability — these things matter, but the truth of being The Guy in WWE is that it’s all about its kingmaker capitalizing on a moment. It has been a slow climb for Reigns because his story doesn’t have the same charm as those of his scrappy Shield brethren, because his insertion into the main event was as inorganic as it was tenuous. The notion of Roman Reigns taking over for Cena and The Rock was never going to work, even though he had the skills.

But Reigns was put on the path to being the top babyface at a time when the company’s crossover successes could come back to their old stomping grounds at will and suck the air out of the arena for a few months. In 2012, WWE was gaining mainstream acceptance. CM Punk’s pipebomb promo made it cool for sports and pop culture websites to cover wrestling. Yet Punk didn’t cross over into broader culture the way Cena and The Rock did; beyond his UFC run, his career hewed closer to wrestlers like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Edge, leading him to work in direct-to-video action movies, comic books, and television shows. Roman Reigns, for his part, inched toward such success, nabbing a small role in Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & ShawStarring his cousin.

This isn’t a mark against Reigns. It would be unfair for everyone to break the division between niche interest, and something larger. Cena and the Rock are both anomalies. Dave Bautista was also resented at times by a significant portion of their audiences. It’s easy to forget, since we’re 20 years into John Cena’s run as a product of WWE’s ceaseless marketing machine, but he faced the same kind of resentment Reigns did, to the extent that one might call the fans’ reaction to Reigns’ ascension an attempt at preventing another “SuperCena”-esque figure.

It worked. It took five years, from the rejection of Reigns at the 2015 Royal Rumble to his departure in 2018 due to leukemia treatment, then his return in 2020, but the WWE Universe finally saw what they were always denied during Cena’s run: a heel turn. It’s a shame that this happened to a lockdown-friendly version of WWE matches, with canned boos and a live audience of gigantic television screens, because Reigns immediately became a must-watch personality. The best work in his career was as a man wounded by the fact that WWE went on without him; though his leukemia was in remission by 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Reigns to stay at home due to immunocompromisation. His armor of justifiable bitterness was the catalyst for his return in 2020.

WWE Photo

Reigns’ run of near-unquestioned dominance may end this weekend at WrestleMania 39. Cody Rhodes will take Reigns’ place as the WWE’s top-ranked wrestler. Rhodes was once also left by WWE. Taking on a nickname opposite his father’s American Dream, Rhodes leaned into the bitterness during his WWE stint, joining the globe-spanning heel stable Bullet Club, then eventually left to help found All Elite Wrestling. No matter the loud boos, he would not stray far from the spotlight. He needed only the support of his audience.

It was in WWE that he discovered it. From the moment his music hit at 2022’s WrestleMania 38, it was obvious that Rhodes built to the moment. His acceptance has surprised even his staunchest critics. He may be the generational babyface WWE was looking for since 2015, when Reigns was getting booed out of arenas and Rhodes was spinning his wheels as a goofy take on his brother Dustin’s Goldust persona.

Why has this anointing worked for Rhodes where it didn’t for his opponent? I suspect it has to do with the fact that he’s earned his place in wrestling despite WWE squandering his early potential. Lineage aside, he gambled on himself for six years and kept winning, becoming one of the Florida-based Ring of Honor’s top draws, one of the faces of New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s push into America, and a cornerstone of a company that has stood as a viable competitor to WWE since its founding. He gambled again and gave up the executive vice presidency stake in AEW as well as basic cable celebrity perks (RIP). Go-Big ShowAnd won even more than it was before.

By contrast, Reigns’ struggle to cement himself at the top of wrestling has happened entirely within WWE, under the brightest lights his profession has to offer. But it largely didn’t matter, because WWE was bigger than any one wrestler, negotiating massive deals with Fox, Comcast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Although the product was not great, it was decades before WWE needed creative that would generate income. Reigns helped them through their doldrums. He was also a shade of beige approved by a focus group in a company with a lot to lose. LivedYou can choose from a variety of shades beige.

And so he was hated for it, to the extent that the absolute worst elements of wrestling fandom speculated that WWE engineered Reigns’ 2019 leukemia remission as a ploy to get fans back on his side. John Cena was never subject to such hostility. Even when there was dissent, Reigns fought on and put WWE on his shoulders until 2020 when it would have been risky for his life.

The Mountain Goats were released in 2015 Beat the Champ, featuring a song called “Heel Turn 2,” where a long-standing babyface, long the subject of abuse, finally snaps, turning his back on everyone, even the president of his fan club. The wrestler justifies his heel turn with the refrain “I don’t want to die in here,” framing it as an act of survival, but when he says “Stay good under pressure for years and years and years,” it’s obvious that his animus toward other wrestlers and the fans has been building for much longer.

Roman Reigns is a man who struggles to be defined. couldTo drift into the dark, new light, do not turn your back. Is it possible for a babyface to bounce back from defeat and realize that they are not dependent on the support of their fans? Roman Reigns took five years to reach his breaking point. WWE is now enjoying its best streak in almost a decade, with WrestleManiaXXXXXXX, nearly ten years ago. Although it is nice to have an openly gay babyface, wrestling thrives when the babyface has someone who can chase him. In wrestling, there is no greater bastard than a man who knows he can’t be beat.

That’s Roman Reigns, and the path he took to get there is his own. His status as a WWE legend is unmatched. He was a long-reigning champion of the heel in a company built on generations. As he enters one of the most important WWE matches in a decade, he may be at his peak. But, there might also be the interesting chapter where his legacy of championships is not as prominent. That’s not bad for the guy who failed to become The Guy.