Eric Bischoff On How WWE Fans Would Respond To A Roman Reigns Heel Turn Now
Four months after revealing to the WWE Universe that his leukemia had returned, The Big Dog, himself, returned when he appeared on Raw earlier this week. Much of the fan perception of Roman Reigns has changed over these last few months are fans were sympathetic to him as a person and a character as he battled this disease.
It wouldn't be past WWE to utilize this real-life situation and create a storyline from it and that's what Eric Bischoff expects them to do. He discussed what WWE will do with Reigns' newfound popularity among the WWE Universe.
"Are they going to go with what seems natural right now, because of the way the crowd did react, because of the inherent underdog? I mean if you talk about an underdog story there's nothing more badass than cancer on the face of this earth," said Bischoff.
"For a guy to come out of that, especially a guy like Roman Reigns, the way he went out and all the passion and the emotion that went with him when he went off and said, 'Look, I've got to take care of this.' They've got an abundance of great stuff there, just raw materials, right? Now what they do with those raw materials, we'll find out."
The natural story would be to push Reigns as a top babyface who overcame the odds and beat cancer. But Bischoff also says they could go in the other direction and turn Reigns heel, which could add additional depth to the Roman Reigns character, albeit it would be controversial.
"If they decide to go another way with that it could be highly, highly controversial," admitted Bischoff. "And you would have people probably losing their minds over it on social media."
One day after Reigns returned to WWE Raw, he then appeared on Good Morning America where he talked about his battle with leukemia. Those kinds of appearances make it seem as WWE will pursue the natural storyline with Reigns as a face.