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When it comes to The Bloodline, at least during Roman Reigns' time as the “Tribal Chief,” WWE fans routinely compared their storyline to the most polarizing term in professional wrestling: cinema.
Unlike in wrestling past, where workers would loudly declare their intentions in the ring with bravado and swagger, The Bloodline would talk quietly in backstage segments, having the sort of somber conversations you'd see in a Martin Scorsese movie before some unlucky gangster was whacked in a bombastic display of violence in the very next segment.
And yet, in the opinion of Paul Heyman, who joined Reigns in a special appearance at Bloomberg's Power Players New York conference, the “Wise Man” had a very different point of reference from which he used to help craft storylines alongside the “Head of the Table,” a piece of pop culture that is about as far removed from the Anoa'i-Fatu story as most fans could imagine: Friends.
“I go by the sitcom theory. The most successful sitcom of all time is Friends. And if you watch the later episodes, it's, ‘Hi. How you doing?' ‘Great.' ‘What's going on?' This and that? But if you watch the first two seasons, every single time the characters address each other, they call each other by their names. ‘Hi, Ross', ‘Hi, Rachel' ‘How you doing Ross?' ‘I'm good. Rachel.' ‘What'd you eat for lunch today Ross?' ‘I don't know. Rachel, what'd you eat?' And they just keep on saying their names, so that when you watch it, you go, Oh, that's Ross. Oh, that's Rachel, and you know all the character's names,” Paul Heyman explained via TOI Sports Desk.
“I've been doing this for almost 40 years. My shtick is, that the first thing I say is, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Paul Heyman.' Because I always presume that the person watching has never seen me before. And anytime I address Roman on television, the first thing I say is, ‘Yes, my Tribal Chief', because they go, Oh, okay, I've never watched this before. I don't know who this guy is, d**n he looks good. But you know what? That's The Tribal Chief. So if you don't know who we are, within a minute of us presenting ourselves, you at least know, okay, that guy's Paul Heyman. That's his Tribal Chief… It's always the understanding that there are going to be more first-time viewers every time we're going to be on television.”
Whoa, interesting stuff, right? Heyman and company do routinely say their names over and over again during segments, and while some fans may have just assumed that was a professional wrestling thing, the reasoning behind it makes a ton of sense, as there are new fans tuning in weekly, especially when SmackDown was still a weekly fixture on Fox every Friday night. If that strategy is part of why the faction has become so popular, then the new Bloodline and the rest of professional wrestling should take notes from Heyman's astute observation.
"The enormity of the social media impact…that WWE offers and its top star can offer on a global basis can even take a streaming service, and the world's biggest streaming service, like Netflix, and make it humble." @HeymanHustle says about @WWERomanReigns #PowerPlayers pic.twitter.com/dvc7cdXjNv
— Bloomberg Live (@BloombergLive) September 5, 2024
Roman Reigns doesn't want WWE to stray too far from the PG era
Elsewhere in his appearance at Bloomberg's Power Players New York conference, Roman Reigns discussed WWE's decision to move SmackDown to the USA Network and RAW to Netflix moving forward.
While many fans have celebrated this announcement as the effective end of the PG era, with a chance to return to the “good old days” of the Attitude Era, Reigns doesn't want Paul “Triple H” Levesque to sway too far away from what has been working, as, well, it's been working.
“If we allow Paul to do Hall of Fame speeches nonstop, we'll definitely push that envelope. For me, I've always enjoyed the challenges of being PG. No offense to our predecessors and the people who came before us and the ratings they revolved around, but to me, it's more challenging to be able to tell these stories,” Roman Reigns noted via Fightful.
“It also allows you to connect with a broader audience, which I feel is always the goal. We want to reach as many people as possible There is a fine limit to where you cross that threshold to where you push people off of the product. I think there is a nice range we can play with and push the envelope in certain senses, but I think we need to stick to our values and morals we've set in place and the culture we have now.”
Wow, well, this feels like one situation where Reigns might actually be in the minority, as the biggest storylines in WWE in his absence have been the ones with the most realism, the most deeply rooted in hatred between performers, and yes, the most PG-13 style storytelling. While the challenge of writing something clean can be exciting from an intellectual standpoint, especially for someone like Reigns, who has made it work after years of being the butt of more than a few wrestling jokes, limiting the storytelling possibilities Levesque has at his disposal is some sufferin' succotash, son.
