Interview: Roman Reigns on People’s Criticisms of WWE and if AEW Is Real Competition to WWE

Sport1 in Germany held a recent interview with Roman Reigns and some of the topics discussed included his thoughts on people who criticize WWE and if he considers All Elite Wrestling to be an actual competitor to WWE.

On the topic of Jon Moxley and others who have criticized WWE, Reigns stated he considers those criticisms of the company to be very disrespectful in his eyes.

“This place has given me so many opportunities, it’s changed my life. I’ve been progressing in life, becoming a better person, a better man. Any focused professional is gonna protect what he cares about. The NFL teams didn’t want to take a chance on me, WWE did. I’ll be damned if anyone is gonna disrespect what we do here, especially within our company. If you’re within our walls, within our locker room and not handling your business the right way, I have no problem with stepping up. I fear no man and if you don’t like what I’m coming from, there’s a couple of options we can do. I firmly believe in the history that my family has had in this business, the relationship they had with the McMahons and WWE. And I’ll be damned if anyone disrespects our way of life. I’ve been fed and I fed my family for years now from this meal plan and I’m not gonna let anyone step on that. If that makes me a locker room leader, then yeah, you can call me that.”

On the topic of AEW’s status as competition, Reigns stated he does not consider them to be any sort of real competition to WWE.

“I think [Seth Rollins] is being generous in calling them a 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 territorys. 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.”