Roman Reigns is the current Universal Champion and has been on arguably the best run of his career. Reigns turned heel after he came back at SummerSlam last year. For several years fans have been wanting Reigns to turn heel and actively rejected him as a babyface.
Despite all the backlash, Vince McMahon didn’t turn Reigns heel. While speaking on The Masked Man Show, former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz discussed Vince McMahon’s mindset when it came to turning Roman Reigns heel.
McMahon was reluctant in pulling the trigger as he saw Reigns as the face of the company similar to John Cena.
“When it came to Roman [Reigns], the model was John [Cena], right? Because there were plenty of times when the writers would come in and be like, ‘Can we just turn John heel?’ With the, ‘Let’s go Cena, Cena sucks. Can we do it? Can we pull the trigger?’ And it was something Vince [McMahon] never wanted to do.
“I think the problem was I think he took that approach with Roman as well. I think it was the, ‘Don’t listen to people, trust your gut, Roman’s a babyface, he’s the new face of the company. At some point, obviously that mindset of, ‘We gotta keep Roman babyface, we gotta keep John Cena babyface’ shifted and in this particular case, it’s like similar to when [Hulk] Hogan turned heel in WCW.”
Gewirtz further said that McMahon didn’t listen to the writers when it came to turning Cena heel and Cena went onto becoming one of the biggest Superstars in WWE history. McMahon had the same mindset for Reigns.
Roman Reigns will be defending his Universal Championship at WWE Elimination Chamber.