Roman Reigns spoke with ESPN after winning the WWE Elimination Chamber main event on Sunday. The full interview is at this link and below are highlights:
How he responds to fan chants like “Just not Roman!” and “same old s–t!”:
“I just do me. There’s a lot of situations where you just have to learn by fire. You get thrown into the deep end and you have to learn how to swim. For me, I just try to take it in stride and go out there and do my thing and handle it how I have. That’s the only way I can really respond is going out there and being me, and that’s the truest way to do it. I’m not going to change me to please other people.”
Top UFC stars like Ronda Rousey and WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar headlining WrestleMania 34 this year:
“It’s great. We’re trying to spread the word about our form of entertainment. We’re just trying to entertain families and pull them out of their regular lives and take them on a vacation for a little bit. When you have a guy like Brock Lesnar and you have a woman like Ronda Rousey, they have that crossover appeal and that legitimacy, so whenever you can put them in this entertainment world, it just adds a greater mystique.
“It almost makes it old school when no one knew what was happening because people know how dangerous Brock Lesnar really is. They’ve seen in him in the Octagon; they’ve seen the savage he can be. It’s an honor to be in there with someone so legitimate. That just shows how much passion he has for our business, to bring his career, his reputation, his accolades and all he has achieved in MMA and put it on the line here.”
Main eventing WrestleMania for the 4th straight year, not fully appreciating the accomplishment until he retires:
“It’s hard to really appreciate these moments. My whole career has felt like it’s been in fast forward. We don’t have an offseason, and that’s the situation we all signed up for. It would be great if we had four months to just relax, reflect and digest it all, but we just keep it moving. There are 52 weeks a year, and the world needs its entertainment and its professional wrestling. But there are moments you want to soak it in. So hopefully one day, I can be home, chilling with my kids, crack a beer open, and sit back and think on what I’ve done.
“The cool thing is we live in a world now where just about everything is recorded, so it won’t ever be a problem to go back and watch what I’ve done. I actually just read this interview that Michael Phelps did a while ago and he said how he had lived in fast forward but it’s cool now that he has slowed down in his career, he can now go back and see those moments and just sit back, enjoy them and relish them. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do the same.”
Source: ESPN
