Roman Reigns: Royal Rumble Reaction was “Huge Kick in the Ass”

WWE superstar Roman Reigns was recently a guest on “The LAW: Live Audio Wrestling” podcast, discussing a number of wrestling-related topics.

The former Shield member talked about his 2015 Royal Rumble match win, noting how the poor reaction he received may have been in part to the return of the ever-so-popular Daniel Bryan:

“In sports entertainment, professional wrestling, entertainment, storytelling, you can do anything, you can tell any story you want to. It’s difficult to say, especially within what we do, with hindsight. I think there is a lot of things we could have done or maybe thought about, but it is what it is, it really is. It all happened for a reason.”

“Bryan and myself were both hurt we were both coming back around similar times. 100% it didn’t help me coming back around the same time as Bryan, especially with everything he has gone though over the past year, year-and-a-half. People talk about getting through adversity and going through some tough stuff, the stuff that happened to Bryan, the ups and downs, I think everyone was rooting for him (Bryan), I was rooting for him. I still to this day root for him. I want to see Bryan back in a wrestling ring, tearing the house down with myself and all the rest of the boys.”

Reigns ultimately chose to turn a negative into a positive, though, using that evening as motivation to step up his game and prove his doubters wrong:

“It was just a tough situation, regardless of what happened or how we could have changed that night as far as responses, as far as having the crowd react properly to me, or how we wanted them to, it didn’t. But it helped me, it helped me grow, it left a huge impression on me, you know I thank Philly every day for that. You have to learn fast in this business and I’d like to think I’m doing that, but without that night, that was a huge kick in the ass, that lit a fire under me. If you’ve seen what I’ve done in the past six-months, I think you can tell Royal Rumble definitely helped me.”

You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.

Reigns will team with Dean Ambrose to take on Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper this Sunday night at WWE “SummerSlam.”

– With h/t to sescoops.com

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