Roman Reigns is one of the most polarising Superstars in WWE history. His meteoric rise following the Shield’s breakup will go down in WWE history as one of the most controversial pushes of all time.
But before Reigns was main-eventing matches with the likes of Brock Lesnar, AJ Styles, Seth Rollins and many others, Reigns was just a regular person. This piece will delve into the origin of the Big Dog, Roman Reigns.
Early Life and Football Career
Reigns was born and raised in Pensacola, Florida and is part of arguably the most famous wrestling family in history. He grew up playing football and hanging out with his cousins, Jimmy and Jey Uso and was always an athletic kid. He got into sports at a young age, and unlike many WWE Superstars, wrestling was not Reigns’ primary goal growing up.
Reigns was a football player, first and foremost.
He was a standout player in high school, playing his first three years at Pensacola Catholic High School and his senior year at Escambia High School. According to Max Preps, he registered 120 tackles, 12 sacks, and 6 forced fumbles as a high school senior en route to winning Defensive Player of the Year from the Pensacola News Journal.
This dominance led Reigns to sign with Georgia Tech as a defensive tackle. He was a part-time player as a freshman before becoming a starter as a sophomore. He was named to the 2006 All-ACC First Team after recording 40 tackles with 9 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks and racked up a total of 29.5 tackles for loss and 12 sacks in his four years as a Yellow Jacket.
Despite this success, Reigns lacked the size and instinct to play football at the next level. He signed with the Minnesota Vikings after not being selected in the 2007 draft but was released shortly after.
And following a short stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars practice squad, Reigns was released yet again and made his way to the Canadian Football League with the Edmonton Eskimos.
He garnered a total of nine tackles and no sacks in five games with the Eskimos before being released. Reigns would then retire from professional football altogether.
Family
Once football fell through, Reigns transitioned to professional wrestling. He was trained by his father, Sika Anoa’i, and his uncle, Afa Anoa’i, who made up the extremely successful Wild Samoans tag team that existed in the 80s and 90s, as well as the crew at Florida Championship Wrestling.
He was also blessed with an incredible wrestling background thanks to his family. Not only does he have the Wild Samoans as his father and uncle, and the Usos as cousins, he has plenty of other relatives who made names in the business.
His brother is the recently deceased Rosey from 3-Minute Warning, while he has numerous cousins including Umaga, Yokozuna, Rikishi, and of course, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. So there’s certainly a case to be made that Reigns was destined to be in this business, and that success was in his blood.
FCW/NXT
Reigns signed a developmental contract with the WWE in 2010 and was assigned to their less-effective and certainly less entertaining version of NXT: FCW, Florida Championship Wrestling. Reigns went by the ring name Leakee at the time and began rising through the ranks.
Like any newbie, Leakee took his fair share of losses when he debuted in the promotion. His first match was a Battle Royale that was eventually won by Alex Riley, and he’d follow that with numerous singles losses.
He lost to Richie Steamboat, Idol Stevens (Damien Sandow), Wes Brisco, Leo Kruger (Adam Rose), and Shad Gaspard before finally picking up a victory over Fahd Rakman. From that point forward, Leakee rarely lost any singles matches as he was clearly being groomed to be a big star.
One of his most notable achievements in FCW was his FCW championship match against Leo Kruger as well as the road he took to get there. Leakee also competed in a number one contender’s triple threat match against his future Shield brothers, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins on his way to the title.
Leakee went on to win the bout but was unable to capture the title from Kruger the following week.
But that didn’t prevent him from capturing gold while in developmental. Leakee teamed up with Mike Dalton, now known as Tyler Breeze, to win the FCW tag team championships.
They defeated the team of Corey Graves and Jake Carter (Vader’s son) to win the titles, before dropping them to the team of Jason Jordan and CJ Parker a month later.
When FCW rebranded to NXT in August 2012, ‘Leakee’ opted to go by the name Roman Reigns. Reigns also debuted a new character which was essentially what Bobby Roode is now: a good-looking, cocky, well-dressed guy who thinks he’s better than everyone else.
This personality is more or less what some fans think Reigns should have been on the main roster after breaking away from the Shield.
Unfortunately, both this character and Reigns’ NXT run were short-lived. He competed in just three matches on NXT TV before being called up to the main roster with the Shield. However, he did make sporadic appearances in NXT in 2013 as part of the Shield, competing in a few six-man tag team matches.
The first was against the team of Scott Dawson, Percy Watson, and Axl Keegan. The second was against Xavier Woods and former NXT tag team champions, Adrian Neville and Corey Graves. The Shield came out victorious both times.
The Shield and Reigns’ Rise to Main-Event Stardom
The Roman Reigns we know today would not be who he is without his time in the Shield. But he actually wasn’t meant to be in the original incarnation of the stable.
According to CM Punk, the original plan for the Shield was that it would consist of Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, and Kassius Ohno. Instead, WWE overruled that idea and inserted Reigns into the group instead of the later-released (and eventually re-signed) Ohno.
If things had gone down the way Punk said it was supposed to, this origin story would likely be different. Who knows if Reigns would have risen to stardom the way he did, or if it would have happened at all.
The Shield hid his weaknesses as a performer and got the fans behind him for a while, so if he came up on his own, he may not have had the same level of success.
But he did have that success, and it was largely due to the historic run the Shield had as a stable. Some consider the Shield to be the best stable of all time, surpassing the likes of the NWO and Evolution.
That’s for good reason as they ran through the roster like nobody’s business and were one of the most entertaining aspects of WWE TV from 2012-2014.
Once Rollins turned on his brothers, Reigns began his ascent to the man we know now. He has certainly taken an interesting road to stardom, from football to being called Leakee to teaming with Tyler Breeze. But he would surely tell you everything worked out for the best.
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