Roman Reigns is now widely regarded as one of the best wrestlers of his generation, and the partnership with Paul Heyman certainly helped that.
When The Shield first split up, Roman struggled to find his feet as a singles star in a very forced babyface role.
Eventually, in 2020, WWE pulled the trigger and turned Reigns heel. He is now the beloved Tribal Chief after years of dominating wrestling. But if Vince McMahon did not listen to Paul Heyman, the Head of the Table would never have become the Tribal Chief, instead being known as ‘The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman.’
Vince McMahon wanted ‘The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman’ instead of the Tribal Chief
Paul Heyman recently spoke to Chris Van Vliet about a number of topics, including his run alongside Reigns.
When doing so, he revealed what Vince wanted Roman to be known as after the heel turn. He said: “Well, you know, it’s just the little things that go into it. The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, [Vince said] ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?’”
Van Vliet then asked: “What did Vince want to call him?”
To which Heyman replied: “Oh, The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman. I said, ‘Well, I can’t be his advocate as Brock Lesnar’s advocate. We have to have something different to Roman Reigns, and Roman Reigns has to be different.
“You got to pull the trigger on this. This has to be as much of a seismic shift as The Deadman becoming The American ——. This is a whole new character. This is a whole new persona, and he could not have played this persona earlier, because he was too young to do it. He needed to weather the storms to become the Tribal Chief. We grew up with him, almost like he was a child star, in that we saw him from his young days, fresh out of college, and he grew into this Tribal Chief.”
Thankfully, Vince ended up taking a reduced role with the company in 2022, at which point Roman’s character really went to another level under Triple H.
The Bloodline storyline was one of the most compelling things we have seen on WWE TV for many years.
Granted, WWE are now trying to copy it again with Roman as a babyface, and it’s not as popular. But there can still be no denying that those few years with Reigns on top as a heel were special.
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