Roman Reigns on Vince McMahon's WWE Departure, Triple H Taking Over as WWE's Head of Creative

By Connor Casey

Roman Reigns spoke with the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast this week ahead of WWE's Clash at the Castle pay-per-view and finally opened up about the company's two biggest stories of the year (and possibly in the last 20 years) — Vince McMahon's departure from WWE and Paul "Triple H" Levesque taking over as the new Head of Creative and Talent Relations for the company. Last month's SummerSlam event marked the first WWE pay-per-view in roughly four decades to have someone other than McMahon as its booker and in the month since then the quality, viewership and overall fan excitement for Raw and SmackDown have been on the upswing. 

"You know, it was just hard to believe because I think, along with anyone who's followed this business or been in this business, Vince is gonna be running this I'm going to be long gone and I'll be 20 years retired and Vince is still running the show," Reigns said while describing McMahon's situation and his retirement announcement. "So I think that was just, 'Okay, we'll see in six months or something like that', was kind of the mindset that I initially took. Then we received the talent relations text message, and then obviously a personal message from him and we talked a little bit."

He then praised the work Levesque has done so far in the role. Reigns previously worked onscreen with Levesque as far back as 2014 when The Authority was first established as a heel faction with The Shield under their control. The two would wind up feuding in the years that followed and main evented WrestleMania 32 in a WWE Championship bout. 

"I think he's done excellent. I think he's like a professional wrestling babyface right now in the industry. He's like a babyface for the industry right now and there's like this honeymoon situation going. There's a lot of excitement. But I mean, if you look at the grand scheme of it and just break it down of what he stepped into just dealing with this controversy. I mean, dealing with the craziness of the impossible happened. Vince McMahon stepped down, like just dealing, wrapping your brain around that and then being the guy to be next. I thought following Cena was tough enough. Imagine having to follow Vince McMahon. I think he's done great. I really do."

h/t WrestlingNews.co

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