Roman Reigns spoke to Coaster Boy Josh this week to promote WrestleMania XXX. Here are some highlights of what he said about:
How he first got involved with WWE:
“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.”
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.”
The Shield’s Debut & WWE’s Original Plan 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.”
