Paul Heyman Reveals Vince McMahon Wanted Roman Reigns to Stay ‘The Big Dog’ After His 2020 Heel Turn

Vince McMahon was skeptical of the ‘Tribal Chief’ branding when Paul Heyman first pitched it — and wanted Roman Reigns to remain ‘The Big Dog’ following his SummerSlam 2020 heel turn. Heyman shared those details in a recent appearance on the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast.

According to Heyman, McMahon’s initial reaction to the Tribal Chief concept was blunt: “Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?” McMahon’s preference was to continue leaning on the established Big Dog identity, pairing it with Heyman’s advocacy role — essentially the same advocate framework he had used with Brock Lesnar. Heyman pushed back, arguing that the character required a complete reinvention. “I can’t be his advocate as Brock Lesnar’s advocate,” Heyman explained. “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.”

Heyman also laid out his original creative vision for how the alliance would be revealed to the audience. The plan called for Reigns to return at SummerSlam as The Big Dog, then behave suspiciously on SmackDown that Friday — being uncooperative with Adam Pearce in a triple threat situation — before a brief, ambiguous shot of Heyman seated beside him on the now-famous couch. The idea was to give fans just five seconds of the two together, enough to spark confusion, before the title change at Payback the following weekend and a full on-air introduction the next Friday.

McMahon also had notes on the couch itself, which Heyman acknowledged was a fair critique given the circumstances. “Vince thought the couch was not opulent enough for a character that was then going to end up being called The Tribal Chief,” Heyman said. “I can’t disagree with him, but we were in a rush to get that done.”

On the broader character argument, Heyman framed the Tribal Chief as something Reigns could only embody after years of seasoning. “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.”

With McMahon now long removed from WWE, the Tribal Chief era has since become one of the most celebrated character runs in modern wrestling history — a testament to how much was riding on that creative argument being won.