Former WWE CEO Vince McMahon originally rejected Roman Reigns‘ now-famous nickname, per Paul Heyman.
Following his return to action in 2020, Roman Reigns ushered in a new character known as “The Tribal Chief.” According to his manager Paul Heyman, then-WWE CEO Vince McMahon initially had a different idea in mind for it, though.
As revealed on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, McMahon wanted to maintain Reigns’ long-time “Big Dog” nickname despite the on-screen character shift.
“The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, [Vince said] ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?'” Heyman recalled. “[Vince wanted to call him] ‘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. 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.”
Over the last six years, Reigns has expanded his “The Tribal Chief” persona as fans now also call him “The Head of the Table” and “The OTC.” Regardless of the nickname, Reigns’ position as the leading Bloodline member has stayed intact, with multiple world title reigns bolstering it.
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