CM Punk Praises Roman Reigns for His Current Heel Run in WWE

Roman Reigns has unquestionably been the highlight of WWE programming for the past year, and his work as "The Tribal Chief" has been generating praise from stars both in and out of the company. That includes former WWE Champion CM Punk, who was on the Wrestling Perspective Podcast recently. Punk said he loves what Reigns is doing both with his character and in the ring, but felt WWE dropped the ball by not having him in this persona sooner.

"I think a lot of times the best stuff, you've also kind of just gotta go with the flow with it," Punk said. "I'll use Roman Reigns as an example, because if we're talking about good stuff, if the WWE does anything good, I mean, this is the one thing that they're doing right right now, it's Roman Reigns," Punk said (h/t Sportskeeda). "His character work, his in-ring stuff. It's all great but I feel like, classic WWE, they're always five years, 10 years late. This is something that they should've done originally, because they tried so hard to get this guy over as a babyface and they gave him X amount of 'Mania main events. Like, 'This is the guy, this is the guy, this is the guy,' and he never really had his moments until now."

"Maybe he needed that adversity and that backlash to finally be this guy, but this is the one thing they're doing right because what can you say bad about what Roman Reigns is doing right now?" he continued. "He's far and away the best guy they have. When you talk about storylines, in-ring work, and all that stuff, right now he's the total package. For the first time in his career, and I'm not being mean to Roman Reigns, I just feel like he's finally where they pushed him to be. It just took a minute, you know what I mean?"

Reigns talked about Punk during an interview with Complex Sports last September, where he proceeded to blast the retired star for comments he made during his infamous Art of Wrestling interview in 2014 that led to certain fans rejecting Reigns' initial singles push.

"If you'd watched wrestling for the past 10 to 15 years, and you love it, and it's within your blood, the you probably have some kind of feelings about that guy. I know I do; just by doing one of these things, he made my job a lot harder," Reigns said.

"If it's something that the fans can get behind, and that it can really make them sink their teeth into the product, and really dive into the creative with us, I'm willing to do it," he continued. "I don't like the guy, I don't know many people who do, but I'm willing to put business first and make really good content if that's the case. He'd probably have to be slapped around a few times in order to get his mind right, but if [he's] willing, and the fans and the audience [are] going to like it and be into it, then most likely I'm going to be into it."