Roman Reigns says it would’ve been “easy” to compete in the Attitude Era

Since WWE moved to a PG-product in mid-2008, some fans have often attributed many of the company’s creative shortcomings on this supposed bridle on WWE’s content.

Any time a wrestler utters a corny line or whenever a silly segment dies a death in front of a live audience, there are still those sects of fans who, instead of recognizing that the writing is terrible, come to this grand conclusion that the TV-PG rating is the root of WWE’s problems and yearn for the days of casual profanity and bladejobs that are as ubiquitous as a superkick in a Young Bucks match.

(To be clear: this is NOT some sort of goody-two-shoes piece extolling the virtues of a “clean-cut” product, which is inherently silly in a kayfabe combat sport.)

But if you ask Universal Champion Roman Reigns, not having access to those tools has made the job of being a top star in WWE more difficult, and thus more rewarding.

Roman Reigns on how he would’ve fared in the Attitude Era

“The Tribal Chief” spoke with Sports Illustrated on a number of topics, and when the subject of the Attitude Era came up, Reigns brought up how easy things would’ve been for him during that time (h/t to Fightful’s Jeremy Lambert for the transcription):

"To be honest, and this is gonna make some good headlines, but it would’ve been too easy,” Reigns said. “I feel like [John] Cena said it before. It’s a challenge to be PG. It’s a challenge to not have to go the cheap route. Being able to shove everything up everyone’s ass, to do that stuff, to just chug beers—and I’m not taking anything way from the performance and the physicality of what they did and the stories they told in the ring—these guys were great performers and great in-ring wrestlers. But the character development was easier. If I could just start chugging bourbon and smoking cigars, imagine what my character could be. We could go even further on this mob boss thing. It’s more challenging what we do now. It’s the facts. That’s why the business is bigger. That’s why we have a bigger platform now. And that was all due to the work done before us to get us to this point, but at the same time if we don’t do it the way we do it now, it wouldn’t be that way. It was a different time."

When the Attitude Era started depends on which fans you ask: some mark its origins with Vince McMahon’s fourth-wall-breaking promo in late 1997; others view “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s WWE Championship win at WrestleMania XIV as the beginning.

That era, of course, contained an uptick in raunchy content that served as the antithesis to the “Rock & Wrestling” 1980s or even “The New Generation” of the early 1990s and, along with WCW and ECW, led to a second “boom” period in pro wrestling. WrestleMania X-Seven is unofficially recognized as the end of the Attitude Era.

Reigns, of course, made his main roster debut long after this in 2012 as a member of The Shield. He was later pushed to the top of the card as the anointed replacement for John Cena as the company’s top babyface. At best, the results were mixed, in part because of the contrived dialogue Reigns was often asked to regurgitate.

Is Reigns right?

Given that Reigns gave this interview with a very WWE-friendly outlet, there’s a chance part of this was said as a means to bolster his current heel persona. Taken at face value, Reigns is both right and wrong.

It is true that many of the characters and tropes from the Attitude Era wouldn’t fly today (no one in the PG era has, for example, donned blackface or forced a woman to get on all fours and bark like a dog, which is a huge checkmark in its favor), and Reigns is correct in saying that many of the tricks people used to get over then were cheap, but these are already things that most fans already knew.

Similar to people who get nostalgic about a certain era of music by lifting up all the good songs and ignoring all the bad ones, painting the Attitude Era with a broad brush disregards all of the gimmicks that weren’t as memorable or successful.

It also ignores that, even after the Attitude Era ended, WWE continued on with the mature content and it did little to help maintain the popularity it built up in the late 90s. Turns out that all the swearing doesn’t mean much when Austin and The Rock aren’t around on a regular basis.

And sure, there were PLENTY of problematic storylines that took place during the Attitude Era, but the PG Era has produced its fair share, too (“Piggy James”, Bobby Lashley’s “sisters”, John Cena and The Rock cutting promos on each other that were so homophobic that GLAAD basically forced WWE to create the B.A. Star initiative, and let’s not get started on the faux ANTIFA stable known as RETRIBUTION)

At the end of the day, most fans value authenticity and quality storytelling, traits that transcend any era, and will bring fans in whether you use every curse word or none at all; whether you have wrestlers drink regular beer or root beer.

No era is ever like the one that came before it — that’s the whole point of learning from the past — which makes it tough to gauge which one was “easier” to thrive in, but the challenges were certainly different.