Roman Reigns recently spoke about the lame idea that WWE had for
the debut of the Shield and more. Here are the highlights..
On
whether he contacted WWE or was contacted by them following football
career: “Everybody’s different. For me, it was different than the next
guy, and the next guy’s different than the next guy…so, coming from our family,
[the WWE] already knew about me, especially playing football in a Division I
college. So, I had heard before that they were interested in giving me a tryout
and getting me down to the developmental system, so I kind of had that in the
back of my head. But once I knew this is something I wanted to try, I had a long
talk with my dad and he made a few phone calls, and I was fortunate enough to
get a tryout.”
On how he trains psychologically to put on a
great match: “Well, putting on a great match can happen in so many
different ways. Sometimes it isn’t psychology… sometimes it’s just fireworks.
Sometimes you have two minutes and have to go out there and just do something…
and ya’ did something it caught the eye and the attention of everybody and there
really wasn’t any psychology, it didn’t make sense, but it still made the people
stand up. So, it’s a weird thing as far as what makes a good match, but as far
as learning the mental game of it, for me, being a football player I’ve always
been good at watching, and watching tape, and learning from that. But when I was
down there learning psychology, it was more talking to my cousins… I talked to
the Usos a good bit. I was actually neighbors with Jey Uso for my first six
months down in developmental, and we’d just sit on the porch all night
talking…talking, talking, talking wrestling.”
On their debut and
one of the original ideas officials had for them: “Yeah, we debuted at
Survivor Series — the coolest part of that is we were supposed to have like
shields. It was really… for lack of a better word… it was really lame. We
had like, literal riot shields… fiberglass riot shields with the word “Shield”
written up it. We were like…’everyone will know who we are…geez’. We just
pictured… trying to get into the ring with these things. Like, for years now…
you go into the ring a certain way, and you’re not usually carrying a huge,
plastic shield. So, we just had this terrifying nightmare of not being able
to..like slide in and we’re like stuck..we can’t get in and we’re looking up and
there’s Ryback standing over us, and we’ve completely blown the whole debut. So,
immediately, Vince was like ‘What, are you guys wussies? You need that?’ We’re
like ‘No’. And he’s like ‘Good, leave them’, and we just ran in there and we
beat the dog piss out of Ryback and put him through the table.”
