Roman Reigns Gloats About His WWE Survivor Series Victory Against Drew McIntyre

It took a ref bump, a low blow and interference from Jey Uso, but Roman Reigns wound up winning the battle of world champions against Drew McIntyre in the main event of Sunday’s Survivor Series pay-per-view. “The Tribal Chief” set out to prove that the WWE Champion was the “secondary” world champion in the company at the event and wound up proving exactly that by eventually knocking out McIntyre with his Guillotine submission hold. Reigns took to Instagram on Monday morning to celebrate his victory, casually tossing in the tagline for this year’s Survivor Series event in the process.

“Few will ever know what it feels like to carry everything on their back. In this generation, there is only one,” Reigns wrote. “The head of the table, the Universal champion, The Best of the Best.”

It’s unclear where Reigns will go from here as world champion. The five men competing for the Blue Brand in the Men’s Survivor Series Elimination tag match were promptly swept by Team Raw earlier in the night, and Reigns has sent Jey Uso to attack anyone he feels may have disrespected him or his family. Daniel Bryan was the first of those victims, so it’s possible he’ll get the next crack at “The Head of the Table.”

Reigns has stated in interviews over the past few months that this heel persona was something he had been developing since its earliest days in WWE’s developmental system. He gave an in-depth explanation of the character to the Load Management podcast back in September.

“I can’t say that I really built it around anyone within the industry,” Reigns said. “If anything, more [from] movies. It’s hard because in a weird way, I’m sure you guys have seen Gangs of New York, The Butcher. In his mind, there is a bad element to him. but he’s the native, he’s the one that’s from America. I like those type of characters to where there’s a justification, in their own mind at least, to what they’re doing.

“For me and the character that I’m trying to portray going forward is not everybody on our roster is going to be able to understand where I’m coming from and the reason that I’m doing it because they’re not in the position that I’m in,” he continued. “They’re not in that boss role, that top-of-the card role, and if they are they haven’t been there as long as I have. So of course they’re not going to be able to understand. But there are some justifications and a lot of rationalizing that this character is going to go through to convince himself that he’s right, even when he is wrong. I’ll have conviction going forward.”