These days Roman Reigns is one of the biggest and best heels in professional wrestling, owning SmackDown every week as the Tribal Chief. That wasn’t always the case though, and for quite after the breakup of The Shield Reigns was one of WWE‘s most prominent babyfaces as Seth Rollins became the heel of the former group. In a new interview with FOX Sports‘ Ryan Satin, Reigns was asked about his heel turn and big return at SummerSlam, and if the heel turn was something he had been pushing for. It turns out that Reigns never wanted to be the babyface coming out of The Shield, as the group had agreed it should be Rollins.
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“I’ve always wanted to turn heel,” Reigns said. “I didn’t feel like I should have been the babyface out of the Shield group. We all agreed, we thought it should have been Seth, and then keep me as a bad guy. But, you know, it just happens the way it happens, the numbers lined up the way they did. Things were starting to work as a good guy for me. Then, obviously, it took a toll here and there.”
“There were some nights where there were some loud boos. People take that response and they run with it, because sometimes, it was at the shows that were big and that were seen. The pay-per-views – the Royal Rumble in Philly. Just about everybody gets booed in Philly, you know what I’m saying? Philly is so loud they’re gonna boo Daniel Bryan one day. That’s how Philly works. It’s just Philly,” Reigns said. “But, like, people aren’t there every single week to see all the live events, to see how well the live events would be doing or the tours would be doing. We’d be selling out houses and I’d be the top babyface, crowd going nuts, cheering the hell out of me.”
“So, it was one of those things where it was like, ‘Man, I want to do this because I know I can tap into a different level of character work. I know I can create so many more layers as a performer if they allow me to do this, but the numbers just wouldn’t let me,” Reigns said. “Like I said before, the response, no matter what, was always big. And in this day and age, I think, controversy has always sold, but, if you don’t have a certain level of negativity coming at you, you might not be doing as good as you think you are.”
“If you don’t have that many haters. I think Kobe said it, ‘You gotta have some haters.’ That’s the key to success sometimes. But, I think the true key to that success is how you handle the haters. How you, in your psyche, you can allow them to affect you or not affect you. But, yeah, man, I wanted to for a long time,” Reigns said.
That’s why when the opportunity finally came Reigns was more than ready and pounced. “When the opportunity came I jumped on it. It was kind of a team discussion. Obviously, you gotta have the big man involved and gotta have the blessing from him. But, it just all seemed to work out with perfect timing,” Reigns said. “I think we’re in a point where we’re in a time frame, being in a pandemic, no crowds, no tickets sales, let’s just create this content and take care of our television providers and our audiences watching at home. Let’s take a chance. If this ain’t the time to gamble, then I don’t know when is. So, I’m glad we did.”
Do you think Reigns should’ve been the heel and Rollins the babyface after The Shield broke up? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things WWE with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
