During a recent interview with CBS Sports, WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns commented on possibly tweaking his character with fans back in attendance, the ThunderDome era, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his ThunderDome legacy ahead of WWE’s return to live touring: “The live crowd has always enhanced my presentation. My reactions have always been, if not the very best, certainly up there with the very best. I’ve now showcased the layers as a performer to be able to do it without a live audience. I’ve had a strong hold on SmackDown and SmackDown being the very best portion of WWE. It’s shown me as the number one guy. That’s my legacy coming out of the ThunderDome. Hands down, without question, it can be debated for great content on social media and WWE.com to put these polls and try to make an argument. But there’s no argument. There’s been nobody to ever carry the WWE product like I have over the past year and I stand on that. You can throw anybody out. We can try and be nice and say, ‘Oh, Bayley! She just got hurt. She was the best.’ Come on, let’s not lie to ourselves. The Tribal Chief has carried the WWE for well over a year now and there’s no denying it.”
On the WWE locker room’s reaction to fans coming back: “I would say everybody’s pretty excited. I would say, there might be some questions for each individual that I can’t answer for. As far as being able to get back to what we do and creating an atmosphere and experience like no other, it’s something that I think everybody in the locker room and the roster has been dying to do. It was what it was with the ThunderDome and just having the ability to continue to provide entertainment for all of our fans globally going through the struggle of the pandemic and lockdown and quarantine together, that has been an awesome experience. Now, it’s ran its course and I think everybody is excited to get back and feel that energy and feel that audience.”
On potential adjustments to his character with fans in attendance: “I don’t think I can just be stuck in any mindset or any pattern. Like anything, there’s some greatness to being able to evolve and to change. Sometimes there’s some growing pains that come with that mindset that you have to get through to find that promised land. For me, I don’t think it’s something I have to stay concrete with. There’s some things I’d like to keep in mind and some of these tools, the ThunderDome was a challenge and you had to show different layers and you had to source different tools and sharpen those tools and work on different parts of the craft. There’s a lot of positive things we can carry forward to a live crowd and there’s other things we have to adjust and evolve in real time week-to-week. Things like the dialogue in-ring, with a live crowd is going to be different, but is also something that can be enhanced. There’s different things, such as chants, that can happen within the moment and that’s something I’ll be able to use to my benefit and use as an interaction tool. The tech is still the same, there’s ring mics and the cameras have microphones that can be turned up to pick up the dialogue for the fans at home. At the same time, we want to enhance that live experience and showcase that to people watching at home to influence them to want to come to the actual show. It’s something you have to keep in mind but I don’t think there are any negatives. It’s nothing but positives.”
