00:00The man Roman Reigns is, is partly my fault.
00:04Nearly 12 years ago, we came down those stairs.
00:08We were brothers, forged from the same fire.
00:16I taught him everything I know. I am partly responsible for the man that he is.
00:31But I could have never imagined the monster that he has become.
00:43Roman Reigns was always the handpicked star who was meant to have the biggest breakout from the shield.
00:49Nobody would have expected the eventual dominance of all three in professional wrestling,
00:54but there's no doubt that history will remember Roman Reigns as the most accomplished of the trio.
00:59But when it came to the post-shield days, he was the one struggling the most to get off the ground.
01:04That was because of the massive expectations put on him when he wasn't ready.
01:08But while Seth Rollins was quick to detach himself from the shield, as was Dean Ambrose,
01:13why did it take Roman Reigns so long?
01:15Specifically, why seven years to fully remove the elements of the shield from his character?
01:21We have to go back a decade ago to 2014.
01:25Stand back, there's a new wrestling quiz coming through.
01:29Check out Brain Buster, the daily quiz that tests your WWE knowledge with winning streaks, stats, and more.
01:36It's time to see if you're up for the challenge.
01:40When the shield split up, Roman Reigns was the one who kept the shield theme song,
01:44even though it was a modified version of it.
01:46He was also the only one to still have the tactical vest.
01:50In hindsight, it's easy to see that WWE was trying to give Roman Reigns the shield aura to make him cool.
01:56But in reality, it was a crutch that backfired big.
02:00As the post-shield years rolled on, Seth Rollins emerged as one of the undisputed top five wrestlers in the world.
02:06Even in 2016, Dean Ambrose had a hot streak because he was far more authentic than what Roman Reigns was presented to be.
02:14It's surprising and also not surprising just how many years WWE went on by keeping the tactical vest and shield theme song of Roman Reigns the same,
02:23with little to no regard for actual character progression.
02:27We didn't even need the benefit of hindsight to see that WWE should have had a couple of transitional years between 2015 to 2017 where there wasn't a long-term top guy.
02:38They had Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose to easily fill the spot of top guys in 2016,
02:43while Roman Reigns had enough heat to become WWE's top villain right away.
02:48In a perfect world, The Undertaker's Wrestlemania streak would have been intact and Roman Reigns would have been the one to end it
02:54and retire him at Wrestlemania 33, cementing him as the ultimate villain before eventually building him up to be the ultimate good guy.
03:02The fact of the matter was that Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose didn't need to maintain any elements of the shield post June 2014.
03:11Neither did Roman Reigns, but the powers that were at the time desperately clung on to any element of the shield to keep Roman Reigns cool,
03:19even when he semi-transitioned from wearing a tactical vest to the types of t-shirts you'd see on WWEshop.com.
03:26When the shield reunited in 2017, it wasn't bad per se.
03:30We're not going to spew out revisionist history and say that fans didn't love it, because they consistently got good reactions.
03:37But the nostalgia-driven reunion was quite obviously a way to save Roman Reigns and give him a boost in popularity.
03:43This proved to be more of a temporary band-aid to a wound that was desperately waiting to be addressed.
03:49It was reflected in the aftermath of the first shield reunion when Roman Reigns was booed at Elimination Chamber 2018
03:56because fans wanted to see the organically hot and popular Braun Strowman headline Wrestlemania 34 instead.
04:02We're not implying that any of this was Roman Reigns' fault, though.
04:05On the contrary, we would argue that none of this was his fault because he was just doing his job and doing what was asked of him.
04:12It's crazy to think that it took a real-life illness, Roman Reigns' battle with leukemia, for fans to finally warm up to him.
04:20But even in 2019 when he returned, there was another brief shield reunion that led to the conclusion of Dean Ambrose's WWE run.
04:28It played no actual impact in Roman Reigns' run later that year.
04:32The fact that it isn't as well-remembered just goes to show you that regardless of how many shield reunions were attempted,
04:38it'll never replicate the lightning in a bottle run that Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose had between 2012 and 2014.
04:46For Roman Reigns and almost all of WWE, 2019 turned out to be an incredibly underwhelming year,
04:52with some fans calling it the most boring year of the PG era.
04:56Even during this time, his presentation was yet to change.
05:00What was really left for him to get rid of was the tactical vest and his theme song.
05:04He was yet to move on from the shield over five and a half years after their breakup.
05:10It's important to remember that both Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose had already shed the last bits of their shield persona over five years prior.
05:17It took Roman Reigns quite a few years, all the way until 2020,
05:21to be able to wield enough backstage influence that he could go straight to the boss and demand a complete change in direction.
05:28That change would happen courtesy of the pandemic, with Roman Reigns changing his appearance while retaining his theme song.
05:34Now, with a completely changed personality, he began wrestling shirtless and showcasing his Greek sculpture of a physique,
05:41something that nobody else in WWE had, further adding to his aura.
05:46This was when there was a calculated, precise change to everything about his character.
05:50For pretty much the first time in his career, Roman Reigns had a greater say in what he was or wasn't going to do.
05:58The result of this was a step-by-step process to establish the Tribal Chief character.
06:03In May 2021, nine months into his Universal Championship run,
06:08Roman Reigns took the final step in his evolution and changed his theme song,
06:12fully detaching himself from the shield after a month shy of seven years.
06:17This was probably one of the most important theme song changes in WWE history.
06:22Paul Heyman did an interview with Complex shortly after Roman Reigns got the new theme,
06:27and said that it was the final step away from the shield.
06:31Both the Wise Man and Roman Reigns desired four changes.
06:35A change in mannerism, a change in presentation, a change in hairstyle, and a change in look.
06:42The new theme song fell into the first two categories.
06:45Considering that Roman Reigns' run as the Tribal Chief has turned out to be his magnum opus,
06:50the Head of the Table song perfectly represented that.
06:53The biggest reason why Roman Reigns took seven years to detach from the shield
06:58boils down to WWE's constant use of the shield's popularity as a crutch to get fans to accept him.
07:04As it turns out, it was really one of the biggest reasons why Roman Reigns struggled to attain the same acceptance
07:10that Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose had already achieved years before.
07:14It isn't that Roman Reigns' shield story is completely, 100% done.
07:19It's just that in recent years, the shield has been used as a ghost of the past
07:23that occasionally comes back to bite Roman Reigns in a big way.
07:27Like when Seth Rollins used their past in their 2022 Royal Rumble feud
07:31by entering with the shield's music and tactical vest.
07:41Or when Sami Zayn hit Roman Reigns with a steel chair when he had his back turned.
07:45Or even Rollins' involvement in the main event of Wrestlemania 40
07:48that directly led to the Tribal Chief's downfall.
07:51The difference between then and now is that Roman Reigns has fully come into his own.
07:56In that same interview we mentioned earlier that Paul Heyman did with Complex,
08:00the wise man put it best.
08:02He said that the new theme song was better than the shield's theme
08:05because it belongs to Roman Reigns and nobody else.
08:09He said that they weren't resting on what was,
08:12they were invoking the future and not reminding you of the past.
08:15He said, with respect to the past, we're bringing it forward.
08:19And boy oh boy, did they succeed.
08:22Thank you so much for watching.
08:24If you liked this video, we suggest you check out our video
08:27on the insane psychology of Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns.
Comments