Roman Reigns recently did an interview with Ryan Satin of FoxSports.com and talked about his heel turn. Here are a few highlights.
Satin: “When you were away for a little while, did you kind of reconstruct how you were going to think when you returned to the ring and how you’d do things differently? Because, like you said, everything about you has been just a totally different character.
You changed everything. The nickname, you’ve added more moves, you talk in the ring loudly now. Like you said, you cried once. Was this something that subconsciously you thought about while you were away to figure out how you were going to apply it to wrestling once you came back?”
Reigns: “Yeah, I watched a couple of the shows. I did not follow it thoroughly. I tried to use as much of the time to be with my family and just really focus in and be present here at home, but on a few of the shows that I saw, I was just like, ‘Man, this is trash.’ Like, you know what I mean?
And that’s me, from the very top, thinking this because I always want to be way better than everybody else. This is no disrespect to what they were doing. They were busting their ass working really hard.
But, for me, I was like, ‘Man, I just know when it’s time to pull my trigger, I know exactly what I want to do. I know exactly the kind of stories I want to tell and the different tools I want to utilize in order to connect with our crowd, our audience that’s watching at home.’
But, I knew it was all based off of emotion. I knew I had to be emotionally connected to what I was doing to be able to wear the skin of the character that I’m trying to convey to our audience. So, that was the most important thing is that I could completely focus in and concentrate 100% on what I was trying to do and the emotions that I was trying to convey throughout my narratives.”
Satin: “I’m fascinated by your heel turn because it feels like something the fans had been clamoring for, for what feels like forever at this point. They were already boo’ing you when they were supposed to be cheering for you.
Can you talk at all about how it finally came to fruition before you returned at SummerSlam? Is this something you pushed for? Is this an idea that was brought to you? How did it all finally come together?”
Reigns: “I’ve always wanted to turn heel.
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.”
“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.
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.”
