During an interview with SI.com, Roman Reigns was asked if he wishes he could’ve been around during the Attitude Era when the WWE product was edgier:
“To be honest, and this is gonna make some good headlines, but it would’ve been too easy. I feel like [John] Cena said it before. It’s a challenge to be PG. It’s a challenge to not have to go the cheap route. Being able to shove everything up everyone’s ass, to do that stuff, to just chug beers—and I’m not taking anything way from the performance and the physicality of what they did and the stories they told in the ring—these guys were great performers and great in-ring wrestlers. But the character development was easier. If I could just start chugging bourbon and smoking cigars, imagine what my character could be. We could go even further on this mob boss thing.
It’s more challenging what we do now. It’s the facts. That’s why the business is bigger. That’s why we have a bigger platform now. And that was all due to the work done before us to get us to this point, but at the same time if we don’t do it the way we do it now, it wouldn’t be that way. It was a different time.”
Reigns also addressed The Undertaker’s comments about today’s wrestlers being “soft” by stating “I think it was just like a retired guy trying to sound gangster.”
