Roman Reigns was a recent guest on Chris Jericho’s Talk is Jericho podcast and provided some interesting details regarding his WrestleMania 31 main event match against Brock Lesnar. The match saw Seth Rollins cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase to capture the WWE Championship, launching Rollins into the main event scene as the golden boy of The Authority.
In speaking to Chris Jericho, Roman Reigns says that Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman were not receptive to his ideas when planning out the match. Reigns claims Lesnar essentially wanted to squash him.
“No, it wasn’t easy, by any means,” Reigns said. “But the thing I had a lot of confidence in is I knew it was just going to be a fight. I knew it was going to be brutal and I like that shit. Like, hey, if you want to bang, I’m all for it. I’m never scared. But it was just weird. It really was. It was last-minute. It was one of those deals where it wasn’t a lot of talking, [they] didn’t seem open to ideas because, essentially, in their minds, and when I say ‘their minds’ I say Brock and Paul, which, that is a powerful pairing right there.”
Roman Reigns meets a strong negative reaction from WWE crowds on a weekly basis, a phenomenon that was growing prior to WrestleMania 31. Reigns says Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar were convinced the WrestleMania crowd wanted to see him get crushed, but he wasn’t going to be steamrolled without putting up a fight.
“But those two, they’re something else. They wanted to kill me. They were convinced however many people were there eighty [thousand], whatever, they wanted to see me get crushed. They were there and they just want to see Roman get his ass beat. And I can’t disagree with them, but brother [has] got to fight. Hey, you can kick my ass all you want, but I’m going to fight.”
Reigns pointed out that he respects Brock Lesnar and everything he’s accomplished. He thinks their match at Mania 31 was the best of his career, but it’s not a personal favorite. Based on current WWE storylines and the rumored WrestleMania 34 main event, Reigns will get another chance to dance with the Beast Incarnate on WWE’s grandest stage.
Dean Ambrose had a similar complaint about working with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32, but went farther than Reigns and outright accused Lesnar of phoning it in for their match. During his appearance on the Stone Cold WWE Network ‘Podcast’ last summer, Ambrose expressed frustration that Lesnar was being ‘lazy’ and didn’t seem interested in putting on a good match with him. We’d later find out that Lesnar was already training for his UFC return at the time he fought Ambrose.
H/T to WrestlingInc.com for the Talk is Jericho transcript