WWE Rumors: How Can WWE Salvage Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, WrestleMania 31 Storyline After Royal Rumble 2015 Backlash?

The 2015 Royal Rumble has already gone down as one of the most infamous events in WWE history. It would appear the WWE learned nothing from the 2014 edition, during which the fans rebelled against Batista's victory and Daniel Bryan's omission from the main event of WrestleMania 30.

On Sunday in Philadelphia, the 2015 Royal Rumble ended with Roman Reigns as the winner and the No.1 Contender to Brock Lesnar's WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 31. Fans reacted with a raucous chorus of boos from the moment Daniel Bryan's feet touched the ground midway through the 30-man match, and those boos only intensified as it became ever clearer that Reigns would win. Not even The Rock's intervention could turn the tide in Reigns' favor.

Fans revolted online as well, as they cried that WWE had failed to learn its lesson from the previous Royal Rumble. The hashtag #cancelwwenetwork trended on Twitter in the aftermath of the Rumble, and major news outlets picked up on the outrage.

And yet, here we sit on Friday, January 30, 2015, with Reigns vs. Lesnar set as the main event of WrestleMania 31. The blizzard in the Northeast forced WWE to release a stripped-down version of Monday Night Raw this week, and two of the segments presented involved Roman Reigns. First, he directly answered questions about the controversy surrounding the Rumble and the fans' reactions, and he did the best job he could in deflecting some of the heat.

But the second segment was the more interesting one, as Paul Heyman launched into a speech about Reigns' family history and admitted how much respect he had for the athlete and his lineage. Heyman asked how he could possibly hope to stop Brock Lesnar, who had just defeated John Cena and Seth Rollins one night earlier.

Reigns calmly and coolly turned to Lesnar, stared him straight in the eyes, and point blank said that he's taking the title. And if he can't take it, then he's taking down as much of Lesnar as he can and makes sure he doesn't leave Mania in one piece. Lesnar abruptly rose, but Reigns didn't flinch. They shook hands, and Reigns never backed down.

This is how WWE can salvage this storyline. Let's set the fans' reactions aside for a moment. We know that the overwhelming majority of the WWE Universe wants to see Daniel Bryan back in the main event and with the championship again after slaying Brock Lesnar, but let's assume that's not going to happen again.

A significant part of the problem with Reigns' ascension has been the way WWE has built him up. Consider what the company had been doing with him for the past year. He almost singlehandedly eliminated the entire opposing team at Survivor Series 2013. He broke the eliminations record for a single Royal Rumble last year with 12. He and The Shield took on The Wyatt Family and Evolution. He defeated Randy Orton at SummerSlam. He was likely on his way to defeating Seth Rollins before he went out with hernia surgery.

But since his return from that injury, Reigns has floundered in a program with the Big Show, an undeniably talented athlete about whom fans no longer care. His promos have changed tone from week to week, as Reigns has portrayed a man who spins nursery rhymes and a man who stands in intimidating silence.

The Roman Reigns we saw on Monday night is the one we need: the man of few words who does his talking with his fists. He is not afraid of Brock Lesnar, who at this point is a Dragonball Z villain.

The only way to fix this story is to portray Reigns correctly, and to make the fans believe that he can take out Lesnar. The quickest and best way to do this would be to have him beat John Cena cleanly at Fast Lane, but the odds of that happening are almost nonexistent. Regardless, Reigns needs to go to battle with a credible opponent in the next two months before he faces Lesnar because the Roman Reigns we have seen in the last few months cannot defeat the Brock Lesnar we have seen in the last few months.

Imagine if Reigns had not gotten hurt and everything had gone as planned. We'd have had a year-plus of Reigns' building momentum, and he would have collided with Lesnar after a year-plus of absolutely dominating the entire WWE locker room, from Triple H to CM Punk to the Undertaker to Cena to Rollins.

But instead, we'll have to make due with what we have, unless WWE calls an audible yet again.