Vince McMahon’s retirement announcement late last month meant that, for the first time in roughly four decades, the WWE would be booked by someone else. Said someone else turned out to be Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who was named WWE’s Head of Creative days after McMahon’s departure. The change in leadership has seen numerous changes to the weekly television product but the world championship picture has stayed mostly the same. Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns is still working on a part-time schedule, hasn’t wrestled on TV since SummerSlam and will defend his title against Drew McIntyre at Clash at the Castle on Sept. 3 (a match that was determined prior to Reigns’ SummerSlam victory over Brock Lesnar).
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Reigns appeared on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast this week and was asked about the change in WWE’s creative. He seemed indifferent to the idea, saying he feels he still runs the show.
“We’re not erasing what I’ve done,” Reigns said. “Even if [Triple H] wasn’t completely locked in to what we’ve been doing over the past six months and obviously over the past year, with, you know, the health issues he’s overcome … I don’t care who’s running the show, in my mind, I’m running the show and as long as I continue to push myself and bring my very best performance every single week it don’t matter if it’s Vince (McMahon), Triple H, Nick (Khan), Stephanie (McMahon), Amazon, Disney, (Paul) Heyman.”
Despite his indifference, Reigns still praised the work Levesque has done so far — “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.”
