Roman Reigns spoke with Rolling Stone about seeing more of the real him in his character and more. Here are the highlights…
Reigns on going through WWE developmental rather than the independent wrestling route
I’m a firm believer in everyone has their own path. If we were all Seth Rollins, then there wouldn’t be anything cool about that. It’s neat that everybody has their own story. For me, I didn’t have an indie background, but at the same time, there’s a lot of things I dealt with just even in developmental. A lot of guys are like this and don’t get enough credit for it. It’s rigorous. You bust your ass in that warehouse. I was hurt, banged up, bruised, nicked. I crushed the brachial nerve that runs down your neck, I’ve lost all strength in my right side, had atrophy, but I still wrestled. I think I missed one show, like, the day it happened. People don’t realize there’s way more than what you know. You can Wikipedia me, but I guarantee you there’s a whole lot more than what you’re reading, and that goes for every superstar. Everyone’s been through hell to get where they are, and I’m not gonna let anybody talk down on what I’ve done just cause I didn’t do what Daniel Bryan or your other favorite wrestlers did. Don’t mean I didn’t earn my spot.
On firing back at the live crowd at Monday’s Raw
That’s just an instinct thing. That’s not something you learn in a warehouse or people can tell you. If you’re a Daniel Bryan fan, I’m all for that. The more people Daniel Bryan will bring into arenas, the better. The more people I bring in, the better. But when I’m talkin’, shut the hell up and let me talk.
On whether we are seeing more of Joe Anoa’i in the Roman Reigns character
Yeah, I think slowly. We’re not there yet. Just the way I talked to Paul last night, I think you could definitely see a clear difference between the way I spoke with Paul and then when I turned my attention to Brock. Those are things that I guess Joe would do. I’m a very situational person, but I enjoy different types of people, hanging out with different types of people, so I think in that regard, socially, I’m very diverse. And I’d like for people to see that within Roman: to be able to handle any type of situation, any type of backstage segment. In real life, I’m able to handle anything, and I’d like to be able to do the same on-camera.
