Green in the ring, green on the mic, no real character at all. I guess it's possible for him to be the next Goldberg and be over huge despite all of that but it seems like a recipe to have half the crowd turn on him.
Reigns, with Bryan around, is basically Cena in 2005.
That is the perfect way to describe him. Cena was over with the crowds in early 2005. People weren't booing him.
Batista became more popular and headlined with Haitch. They killed it until June. He was the biggest star.
Then the switch happens. Cena comes to Raw, Batista goes to Smackdown.
Then a couple of weeks later throughout his fued with Chris Jericho, the fans just turn on Cena. It's like they just went, 'Fuck this guy, he's not who we want'. Against Jericho who was a glorified mid-carder at the time. Whether that's because the brand split had more effect back then with crowds, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty confident Batista wouldn't have run into that problem since he was still over even after the Cena backlash began.
If Bryan is around and still really over, Reigns will get a backlash if he's given precedence. Unless they somehow make Reigns even more beloved or beloved enough that fans are happy with him in that spot. But something tells me if Bryan is here in January, fans are going to shit on whoever stops him from winning. And if WWE are smart, they should run with it.
It's not going to kill them if they don't pull the trigger on Reigns for 31. He can still be booked strong and it's to their own benefit if they get a couple of big stars. He's still really green in the ring. And WWE has nothing but time. So they should use it in the right way to build up a proper roster of new stars.