Paul Heyman says Roman Reigns almost stayed stuck in Big Dog mode, and that would have been a very different story.
While speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Heyman revealed that when he first pushed the Tribal Chief idea, not everyone was sold on the name. Vince McMahon, according to Heyman, still saw Roman as The Big Dog.
“Well, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s 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?’.”
When Van Vliet asked what Vince wanted to call him, Heyman did not overcomplicate it: “Oh, the big dog, Roman Reigns.” That was the problem. Heyman knew Roman could not just be the same guy with Paul Heyman standing next to him. He also refused to be Roman’s “advocate,” because that belonged to Brock Lesnar. If Roman was changing, everything had to change.
“Still be the big dog. And, and I his advocate, Paul Heyman, I thought, I can’t be his advocate. It was Brock Lesnar’s advocate. We have to have to be something different to Roman Reigns. 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 Dead Man becoming the American Badass. This is a whole new character. This is a whole new persona.”
So, Heyman was not trying to slap a new nickname on Roman and call it a day. He wanted a full reset. New energy, new title, new presence, new Roman. And he believed Roman was finally ready for it because of everything he had already been through.
“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, 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.”
That is the wild part. The Tribal Chief did not happen just because someone came up with a cool name. Heyman says Roman had to grow into it, and Vince apparently still had one foot in the Big Dog era before the switch finally happened. In the end, WWE pulled the trigger, and Roman Reigns became the biggest version of himself. The Big Dog was over. The Tribal Chief took over the yard.
What do you think about Vince McMahon wanting Roman Reigns to stay The Big Dog before the Tribal Chief era? Did WWE make the right call by completely changing Roman’s character? Leave your feedback below.
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