I am sure that we all remember when Roman Reigns and The Shield made their WWE debut. It was at the height of that month where the world actually cared about Ryback. In fact, you could argue that The Shield beating down Ryback at Survivor Series was the beginning of the end for him.
Recently Roman Reigns did an interview where he discussed his road to WWE, how he trains and what WWE wanted the debut of The Shield to be like. Below are some of the excerpts taken from the interview.
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.
Can you imagine how ridiculous The Shield would look if they actually carried shields to the ring. Thank goodness the three of them were smart enough to question that idea and McMahon was smart enough to let it go.
0 comments:
Post a Comment