Reigns Suggests Calling AEW Competition to WWE Is “Generous”
Roman Reigns recently spoke with SPORT1 out of Germany on whether AEW is competition to WWE, if he’d be upset if fans started to boo him again, Becky Lynch, and more. Highlights are below.
On why AEW isn’t competition to WWE: “I think [Seth Rollins] is being generous in calling them competition. I don’t want to get too deep into this […], I said it before: It’s an option and that’s great for professional wrestlers, pretty cool for fans. Before my family was WWE only, we’ve been a territorial family. You had to move, work with different promotions and territories. I’m always gonna be ‘pro pro-wrestler’, but at the end of the day: WWE is my home, it’s what I represent and we’re so far ahead. You can see it in other shows: It’s not easy to have a clean production, you have to have a lot of experience. Our talent is top-notch, we’ve got main eventers for day, but it also is our crew. They’re busting their asses all night to get the show running. There’s so many people that make this place work. When you see other people out there tryin’ to do it, you see the flaws and it makes you respect what we do even more. It’s easy to complain and to say this and this on paper, but when it’s time to go out there and actually do it: Nobody will do it like WWE. Period.”
On if it would upset him if fans started to boo him again: “Nah, I don’t care what they do in this case. They paid their money – their hard-earned money – to get to the show. They can do what they wanna do. Everybody’s situation is different, we enjoy every way our fans are expressing themselves. As long as you make noise, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s cheers or boos. The last thing I want is silence, fans sitting on their hands – ‘anyone want some popcorn?’: That’s bad for a performer. I’ve always had the ability to rub people one way or the other. As long as that continues – heavy cheers, polarizing reaction, heavy boos: I’m all for it.”
On Becky Lynch: “Undeniable resilience. She’s cut from a different cloth. She brought the fresh air that the world’s been waiting for. Her rise, the journey she’s been on: It’s been many years with all kinds of adversity, injuries, career-threatening injuries: That shows the passion, the drive, that never-say-die attitude. I respect that and as a father to a little girl I think I should do everything in my power to help promote that and ad to the awareness of what our women do: They are killing it. We’ve got main eventers for days in our women’s locker room as well: The Horsewomen, Ronda Rousey, everybody. They did something special and I’m really interested in seeing how they maintain, how they continue to push, to progress, to take everything to new heights, to trailblaze like nobody has before.”
