Roman Reigns Almost Never Became The Tribal Chief in WWE

Roman Reigns is the current World Heavyweight Champion. Reigns has cemented himself as a top star in the business with such aplomb that It’s hard to think of a time he was booed by fans when he was heavily pushed in the old regime under Vince McMahon as the ‘Big Dog’ character.

A major part of Reigns’s success is owed to WWE Icon Paul Heyman. His alliance with Heyman and subsequent transformation into the Tribal Chief character not only changed the course of his career but also WWE as a whole. Reigns’ alignment wth Heyman led to the Bloodline saga in which he would have his Samoan family members (and at one point Sami Zayn) do his bidding and act as a heel for years.

This character shift didn’t come easy, however, as Paul Heyman recalled in his interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight. Heyman said that Vince McMahon didn’t like the idea of Roman being called the ‘Tribal Chief,’ and he wanted the superstar to continue with the title ‘Big Dog’.

“It’s just the little things that go into it. The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?’ [What did Vince want to call him?] Oh, The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman, I said, ‘Well, I can’t be his advocate as Brock Lesnar’s advocate. We have to have something different to Roman Reigns, and Roman Reigns has to be different,’” said Heyman.

Heyman, who is considered a creative genius in the pro-wrestling world, proved this by convincing Vince McMahon that a seismic shift was necessary in Roman Reigns’ character and story, akin to the Undertaker’s character, which went from the Deadman to the American Badass in the early 2000s.

“You got to pull the trigger on this. This has to be as much of a seismic shift as The Deadman becoming the American Badass. This is a whole new character. This is a whole new persona, 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 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,” Heyman continued.

Heyman also recalled McMahon not liking the idea of Roman Reigns’ Tribal Chief character sitting on a couch next to Heyman, but they had to do it because they were short on time to introduce his new persona.

Roman Reigns has reformed the Bloodline on RAW

After the official coronation and induction of Jacob Fatu as its latest member, the Bloodline is back in WWE. The Samoan Werewolf and the Usos answer to their Tribal Chief, and together the faction looks like it could rule over RAW for months to come.

Reigns has also tried to get another cousin of his, SmackDown‘s Solo Sikoa, to join them, but so far, Sikoa has refused because he runs his own family, the MFTs, on the blue brand.

Sikoa did show up on the latest episode of RAW, and it would be interesting to see if he eventually joins the Bloodline.