THE ROMAN REIGNS FACTOR
Austin: “When Vince came to me and said, ‘Hey man in two weeks you’re going to go over in the King of the Ring’ and I said ‘OK cool’. I didn’t say, ‘hey man there’s been guys that have been here longer than me, and maybe they should do that.’ So when Roman Reigns gets the word that he’s going over in the Rumble, what’s he supposed to say?”
Triple H: “Thank you very much!”
Austin: “Exactly. This is a business where sometimes you got to put your big-boy britches on and go to work. A portion of the crowd felt like he hadn’t earned that yet. So when the finish went down the way it did … he ended up getting the heat out of that, and the resentment from the fans because they were mad at the writing staff.”
Triple H: “There’s one guy calling the shots, and that’s Vince. That Royal Rumble was debated, and poured over, and gone through and there were a lot of suggestions. You’ve got one guy that takes all the suggestions, boils it up and that’s the direction you go in. That’s Vince. Is he perfect? No. Am I? No. Is the writing team? No. There’s a lot of ideas. We choose what we think will be best at the time, but he’d be the first guy to say he doesn’t always make the right call. But he’s got a pretty damn good track record.”
Austin: “It’s supply and demand. It seemed like for a time, people really wanted Roman Reigns, and they were giving Roman Reigns. Daniel Bryan comes back and they want Daniel Bryan. You’ve got a supply of each. They start demanding Bryan, and they kept giving Roman, and the people got a little hot.”
