This kind of thing happens all the time in sports. A visiting team might sometimes appear to have more support than the home team. It usually happens when the home team is not very good. If they do not give their fans something to cheer about, they will be quiet and fans of the other team will be vocal. If that poor home team cannot get it together during the game, that will just send a lot of their fans heading for the exits before the game even ends. And if that team is consistently lousy, their fans might not even bother coming to the games in the first place, leaving lots of seats for any fans of the road teams to show up.
The reason I bring this up now, because it was something I have wanted to bring up for a while, is because I just read a report that a lot of fans left before the end of Raw last night. I didn't watch all of Raw, so I cannot tell how accurate the report is. I then saw some fans try to spin it to make it sound like fans walked out rather than see Roman Reigns or that the positive reaction he got should be taken with a grain of salt.
The overness of Roman Reigns is definitely something to talk about. He is not as popular as The Rock or Austin were in their prime, but it would be wrong to think that all he gets is nuclear heat, like he got earlier this year. Smarks dislike him. Many dislike him with a passion. Crowd reactions are still one of the best ways to tell how over someone is, but you have to understand the crowd. Roman Reigns has gotten terrible reactions from crowds packed with smarks. And there are still pockets of smarks that will give him a negative reaction here and there in more balanced crowds. But there are also a lot of fans that do cheer him. In the end, I still do not think he has A+ overness.
Take Sasha Banks. She is the opposite of Roman Reigns. Wrestling fans love her. You sometimes get chants for her. But I refuse to believe she is really extremely over. She once had a match on Raw that got a negative reaction because fans were more interested in Brock Lesnar. She went on to have an amazing match at NXT. Ever since then, she has pretty much solidified her legendary status. That is, with wrestling fans. Those NXT fans travel well. Those kind of fans aren't just found in Florida. They are found all over the world. And they do get very vocal. And their opinion, moreover, might sometimes be quite different from what the WWE wants. Sasha Banks has not done anything on the main roster to get over with the general audience. The WWE is mostly to blame for that. They have not pushed her well. I once read on a message board that Sasha Banks got an amazing reaction on a Smackdown. When I went to take a look, I did not see it and I did not hear it. Again, I am not convinced she is really that over.
Why do I say Daniel Bryan really did have A+ overness? Because the reaction he was getting was clearly amazing on a consistent basis. Not only could you hear it, you could see it. You could see fans waving their hands along with Daniel Bryan. This guy was over with wrestling fans before he signed with the WWE, but energizing the rest of the fans like he did is what makes him A+. No one else was doing that, including John Cena, the centerpiece for about a decade, and including Roman Reigns, whose overness should be scrutinized. It is just obvious how over this guy was.
Why do I say Mickie James was the most over diva on the roster? Because she consistently got cheered. It wasn't just in front of smark-filled PPV audiences and her hometown crowd. She got great reactions wherever the WWE went. She would come out on top in a lot of polls I have seen. Aside from fan reactions, polls and contests/tournaments that fans sometimes have on the Internet are also an indicator of how much a wrestler is liked. And when she got released, there was a backlash that no other diva that has been released has gotten. When you compare her connection with the fans to that of the other divas that were around her, no one else was connecting with both wrestling fans and the general crowd as well as her.
Silence can be drowned out very easily. And when that happens, you might be fooled into believing something that isn't true. If a sports team does not give their fans something to cheer about, the road team might end up looking more popular than they really are. If smarks just give up and leave, Roman Reigns might end up looking a lot more popular than he really is. If casual fans have no reason to cheer for Sasha Banks, a lot of wrestling fans still will and create the idea that she is more popular than she really is. Before you crown someone as over or not over, you should stop and think about that reaction they are getting.
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