It was in the year 2014 when Roman Reigns and the faction known as the Shield has turned into babyfaces. Prior to that, they were dominating the WWE as the biggest heels. However, it was the crowd’s reaction which forced them to change their characteristics.
After the Shield broke up in the same year, Reigns was pitted as the prime face of the WWE brand by Vince McMahon which turned out to be a disastrous decision. Despite being a face, the Big Dog earned a lot of negative reactions from the crowd in every single arena he enters. This also crowned him with the worst wrestler of 2016, as well.
This is the reason why fans and legends wanted to turn the Samoan superstar into a heel on different occasions. However, the Boss never agreed to that. This time Roman reigns himself opened up with the idea while giving an interview with ESPN’s Cheap Heat Podcast He said that being a bad guy will earn him only boos whereas being ‘the Guy’ will let the audience polarize towards him. This was his actual reaction regarding this matter:
“The one thing I like about my situation and if I think I was to commit to one, ‘I’m a bad guy now – I’m pissed and I’m going to try to take everybody out’ then it’s only one, like, ‘boo’. Do you know what I mean? But when I’m out there, there are all kinds of noise. There [are] all kinds of chants. It’s pandemonium, man. That’s how I like it.”
He was also seen upset with the fact that the Shield broke up at a time when they were on top of their game. He and his partners in crime, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose earned a name for themselves with this group. He ranked their group amongst top 5 while asked about the same:
“I think we’re definitely in the top five. The difference between The Shield and everybody else is we didn’t have names. Seth and Dean, they were kind of indie darlings, so they had a little bit of an internet buzz, but as far as casual fans and mass media, nobody knew who they were.
“Nobody knew who I was. I didn’t have any [professional] wrestling following, so for us to come in and make a name for ourselves, I think that speaks a lot. I still, to this day, feel like we broke up too early. I really do. I think we had a really nice babyface run in us, but it just is what it is.”