Triple H was interviewed for a new ESPN piece on Roman Reigns and the love/hate relationship that the fans have with "The Big Dog." Hunter says that the fans who "hate" Roman are the same fans who "hated" John Cena, and the mixed reaction that both men get means that the WWE doesn't have to make a decision about whether to push either of them as a traditional babyface or give them a traditional heel turn.
"Fans will say that all the time -- 'I hate Roman Reigns.' They did it with Cena, too. I remember telling Cena years ago, when it started happening to him, 'Dude, what do you care? You're the Yankees and the Red Sox at the same time.' The place is sold out.
"When people say, 'They should just turn Roman,' why? For the people that hate him, he's already turned, and for the people that love him, they don't want him to turn. And if we turned him, the people who hate him would switch to loving him, and the people who love him would switch to hating him."
Hunter went on to say that popularity doesn't mean "everybody likes you" anymore. It means "everybody's talking about you." And with so many fans talking and having such strong opinions, his contention is that it doesn't matter who the WWE gets behind--the fans are going to choose who gets over.
"Roman Reigns sells tickets. Roman Reigns sells merchandise. Roman Reigns is one of the most looked-up guys on the internet. He's all of these things. It doesn't matter. We're in a world now where there's so much access to everything that you can't dictate to somebody anymore.
"That's what the internet does -- it allows you to have your own opinion, and you can find somebody that backs your opinion up so you're not all alone. You can hate who you want to hate, love who you want to love, and no matter what we do, no matter what it seems like we're promotionally getting behind, it really sort of doesn't matter. We can't control that."
In the same article, Roman Reigns says that he's the only WWE superstar in history to be a true "tweener."
You can read the entire ESPN article at this link.
