Original Plans For Roman Reigns After Huge WWE Alliance Revealed

Huge revelation on original plans about Roman Reigns’ historic WWE alliance a few years back.

Back in 2020, Roman Reigns made his TV return after months of absence with Paul Heyman sitting beside him. Roman later went on to become the Tribal Chief and had a historic run for years as a heel who manipulates and controls the Bloodline.

Roman Reigns’ alliance with Paul Heyman as his wiseman was universally loved. Meanwhile, Heyman revealed the original plans about the iconic alliance.

Vince McMahon’s original plans for Roman Reigns’ big alliance

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Paul Heyman revealed that Vince McMahon still wanted Roman Reigns to be called “The Big Dog” instead of “Tribal Chief” and Vince wanted Heyman to be Roman’s advocate:

It’s just the little things that go into it. The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?’ [What did Vince want to call him?] Oh, The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman, I said, ‘Well, I can’t be his advocate as Brock Lesnar’s advocate. We have to have something different to Roman Reigns, and Roman Reigns has to be different.’”

Paul Heyman further recalled how he convinced Vince McMahon to develop Roman Reigns’ whole new character:

You got to pull the trigger on this. This has to be as much of a seismic shift as The Deadman becoming the American Badass. This is a whole new character. This is a whole new persona, and he could not have played this persona earlier, because he was too young to do it. He needed to weather the storms to become The Tribal Chief. We grew up with him, almost like he was a child star, in that we saw him from his young days, fresh out of college, and he grew into this Tribal Chief.”

Heyman also revealed that Vince McMahon wasn’t a fan of the Tribal Chief sitting on a couch with Heyman during their alliance:

Vince thought the couch was not opulent enough for a character that was going to end up being called The Tribal Chief. I can’t disagree with him, but we were in a rush to get that done. Well, the original idea was for us both to return at SummerSlam, and then be on TV that Friday and lead into Payback that weekend that we built to in the rematch where the title went to the tribal chief Roman Reigns.” [h/t featuresofwrestling.com]

Paul Heyman says Vince McMahon wanted Roman Reigns to still be known as "The Big Dog" rather than the Tribal Chief following his WWE heel turn in 2020:

"The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, [Vince said] ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?’”

“[What did Vince… pic.twitter.com/NUKB4wErxn

— WrestleTalk (@WrestleTalk_TV) June 23, 2026

Heyman further recalled predicting that his alliance with Roman would make history in WWE, and it indeed did.

Also read: Paul Heyman Drops AEW Bombshell After Disappearing From WWE TV