Roman Reigns' rise to the top in WWE hasn't been without its fair share of challenges, but as the OTC and the longest-reigning WWE Champion of the modern era, he's finally established himself as an all-time great.
Reigns will headline another WrestleMania this weekend and, in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, touched on the fact he won't be challenging Cody Rhodes for the title he lost to the American Nightmare last year.
"Three in a row seems a bit much," Reigns admits. "To keep different trajectories right now between Cody and I, keep us a little bit separate, isn’t a bad thing."
The clock may be ticking on a rematch, though, as he confirmed that his current deal with WWE will expire after WrestleMania 42 in 2026. "After I finish the contract that I’m in, we probably got another year or two max," he says of his in-ring future. "Then it’s time to take on a less physical form of entertainment."
Elsewhere in the conversation, it's strongly hinted that Hollywood could lie in Reigns' future. However, he was also asked about the past, including the "Big Dog" gimmick that made him into a despised character among many WWE fans for several years.
"They’re an educated fan base, and they’re just not going to have someone who’s not 100 percent ready pushed onto them because those flaws are apparent," Reigns now acknowledges. "They were able to see the holes in my game, the inexperience that was still lingering over me. It was very simple. They were honest and I wasn’t."
Being paired up with Paul Heyman changed everything, but when the COVID pandemic hit, Reigns came close to calling it quits on his professional wrestling career (he famously refused to compete at WrestleMania 36, leading to Braun Strowman facing Goldberg in his place).
"I was prepared to walk away if we weren’t going to be able to do what I felt was right for me creatively at the time," he says.
Perhaps inevitably, talk turned to Vince McMahon's recent legal issues and the former WWE Chairman being pushed out of WWE amid a series of serious sexual assault and misconduct allegations. Many of those were made by former WWE employee Janel Grant.
"She’s got to live with all these situations that happened and hopefully she’s in a place where she feels comfortable and she’s secure in her own place," Reigns says of Grant. "It’s embarrassing. That’s stuff you don’t want to hear about. You don’t want your family to hear about."
While he confirmed that McMahon reached out last year to wish him a happy birthday, it sounds like that's been the extent of their contact since.
Reigns also talks politics in the piece, strongly hinting that, despite being a registered Democrat, he chose to support Donald Trump in the latest U.S. Election because, "One person was giving us information. One person was answering questions, so it wasn’t that hard [a choice]."
Let us know your thoughts on Reigns' comments in the usual place.