Paul Heyman Explains Why He Knew The Bloodline Story Would Work
Paul Heyman has done his best to explain that the main reason he believed The Bloodline story would work in WWE is because of one man: Roman Reigns.
Ever since Roman Reigns was paired with Paul Heyman in August 2020, all Reigns has done is win championships and plenty of matches. The new direction for Reigns saw him introduce Heyman as his Special Counsel while also referring to the ECW promoter as a “Wise Man” many times as well.
Reigns won the Universal Title in August 2020 and over 900+ days later, he still has that title. Reigns also won the WWE Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 38, which was 11 months ago. At WrestleMania 39, Reigns defends his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship (both titles) against Cody Rhodes.
While The Bloodline group consisting of Roman Reigns, Paul Heyman, The Usos (Jimmy & Jey Uso), Solo Sikoa and Sami Zayn did have a lot of success during their run, they currently have a lot of problems as evidenced this past Friday on Smackdown.
The “Wise Man” Paul Heyman appeared on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast to talk about a number of different subjects. During the interview, Paul Heyman was asked if he was surprised that The Bloodline has worked so well, which led to Heyman crediting Roman Reigns for his role in the group.
“With all false humility aside, no, I’m not. The reason why is because of my belief in Roman Reigns as a performer. When we made the decision, and Roman Reigns and I talked about working with each other for several years, and the time was never right. I was too attached to the hip of Brock Lesnar, and rightfully so because we kept on elevating each other and we were needed for each other at the time.”
“Roman Reigns was still finding his own way and still telling his story to the audience because to get to where he is now as the tribal chief, he had to have weathered all the storms, fought all the battles, and he needed to be more seasoned. He needed to be older than the Big Dog Roman Reigns.”
As he continued, Paul Heyman spoke about how when his association with Reigns started, it was when there were no fans at WWE shows, which was something WWE tried to use to their advantage.
“So the time was right and it was in the middle of COVID. This is where we had virtual audiences and everyone looked at that as a restriction. In my first conversation with Roman Reigns about how to become not only the number one superstar in the entire industry, not just WWE, but also to become the most compelling character on television itself, the first thing he said was, ‘Wow, what an opportunity we have to do things differently.'”
“Right there I knew we hit gold because we weren’t looking at, ‘Well, there’s no fans live in the arena.’ We were looking at, ‘Wow, we can actually put the camera right in the ring with us. We can whisper things and have the camera mics pick it up. We didn’t have to talk into the microphone at all times to deliver the message.’ “
“All the things that you are given as brilliant opportunities, when there’s 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people in an arena or a stadium, the flip side of that is the intimacy when there’s no one there, and how you can position a camera literally right here to the face and at the last second of the show, turn into the camera and just say, ‘Acknowledge me’ and whisper it and have everyone hear you.”
Paul Heyman would then go on to explain what his goal was with Roman Reigns in this storyline.
“So long answer even longer, I’m not surprised because from the moment Roman Reigns and I got a chance to work together, the entire goal was to present the most compelling, the most riveting, the most forward thinking character on television itself, let alone in professional wrestling, sports entertainment, WWE.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Paul Heyman also spoke about The Rock not competing at WrestleMania 39 in a dream match against Reigns despite many rumors about it in the past.