Roman Reigns On Why He Does Not See AEW As Real Competition, Says They Are “Babied” By Fansbase

The Head of the Table thinks AEW has a ceiling.

For the last few years, the ar between AEW and WWE has been growing more and more with every passing day. It started out as things with the fans but with some in AEW amping up the fans with their jabs and comments towards WWE. Yet recently things have really started to heat up between the two companies and it’s the most talked-about thing in wrestling. Now more any more the question of who is competition to who is asked more and more.

While speaking with Mike DeStefano of Complex Sports, Roman Reigns was AEW being competition to WWE, and reigns gave a pretty straightforward answer. He talked about them being babied by their fans and how they grew their hardcore fanbase by being the new kids on the block. Reigns also talked about some in the locker room who may think they have to step it up to compete with them but he thinks there is no one better than him and he just needs to keep doing what he does.

No. I mean, not for me personally. This is one of those subjects that’s very subjective and there’s a lot of passion and tribalism that really sways and creates an unbiased opinion. But I can only speak from my perspective. I’m one of those guys who will compete at anything. Like, ‘I bet you I can eat that cookie faster.’ I want to be the best at anything that I choose to do. We pull up on lawn mowers, we cut the yard in half, I’m going to beat you. My side will look better than yours. So me, I don’t see the real competition [with AEW] because I think their fan base legitimately is a hardcore fan base. So there’s like a ceiling and a built-in ground to that viewership. [The WWE is] trying to connect with everyone. We’re trying to connect with the mainstream. We’re trying to pull in the casual fan. We’re trying to engage the new viewer, while also servicing our hardcore fan base and give them compelling stories to fulfill them as well. I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but I’ve said it before, when the audience is probably the biggest character in your show, that’s strange to me. You’ll hear it all the time, the reviews and the comparisons. I think because they are the new kids on the block, they’re the cool kids in town I guess because of how premature and how novel it kind of still is, I think there still being babied by these hardcore wrestling fans. Which is fine. That’s great. I don’t think anybody’s going to ever, especially from a performance standpoint say, ‘Oh no, there’s more opportunities out there? That sucks.’ So it’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing for professional wrestling. It’s just a weird argument because there’s so much bias and there’s so much, ‘I’m on this side and I’m not gonna open my mind to the other side.’ And it goes both ways. 

As far as competition, not to me. There might be some other people on our roster who maybe think they need to dig deep and get better as a performer and what they do out there at the art form, but there’s nobody in the whole world, any other promotion, in WWE…I’m better at this art form than everybody else. And I stand on that. That’s the totality of it. I’m not just talking about, ‘Oh, his spots are so good and he counters real well.’ That stuff don’t mean anything to me. When you tally it all up, nobody touches me in this business.

Roman Reigns will compete next Thursday at the WWE Crown Jewel event when he defends the Universal Championship against former champion Brock Lesnar. First though, Reigns has one stop before that and that is tonight with Friday Night Smackdown. Remember tonight’s Smackdown is on FS1 and will have an extra 30 minutes at the end of the show.

For more on Reigns’ current storyline with Brock Lesnar, Smackdown tonight, and more, keep it locked right here and to the PWUnlimited YouTube Channel.