Roman Reigns’ conversation with Vince McMahon about abandoning his WrestleMania match against Goldberg and stepping away from wrestling during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic “wasn’t a good one.”
The Tribal Chief admitted this during his most recent interview with ESPN. Reigns recalled that we didn’t have enough information about the pandemic that changed the world at the time. Per the Universal champion, WWE didn’t have a proper protocol so he made the smart choice:
“We didn’t have enough information [about COVID-19]. We didn’t have a proper protocol for protection. I think I made the very smart choice in stepping back and kind of game planning and figuring this thing out and seeing where it went.”
The Roman Reigns that went away never returned. We saw a completely new avatar of the WWE star when he came back. Roman said that he wanted to be viewed as the most powerful superstar of all time:
“I just kept going back to ‘power,’ I just want to be viewed as the most powerful superstar of all time, when it comes to WWE and sports entertainment. I just really wanted to convey this portrait of strength. Almost like a Mafia-style power. Not only is it respect, but they fear me.”
The story notes that The Tribal Chief and Paul Heyman said that they might have not returned unless Vince McMahon gave them the permission to “execute this story in a mostly unscripted fashion.”
