Major WWE Star Calls Roman Reigns Passionless

Following last night’s episode of SmackDown on FOX, former WWE Champion Daniel Bryan appeared on TalkingSmack, where he spoke openly about Roman Reigns, who he is rumoured to be facing at WrestleMania this year.

When speaking to Kayla Braxton and Paul Heyman about Roman Reigns, Daniel Bryan called the Universal Champion “passionless” in the ring, and joked that he used to wear his vest to hide his lack of heart:

“There’s a couple things that you got wrong, and it has to do with motivation and what drives me. I’m not interested in glory. I’m not interested in the adulation of the fans, despite all the yes chants. Do you know what I loved? I loved when we were at the Performance Center, wrestling in front of zero people with zero noise, just wrestling. Do you know what made people love me? I don’t know if you remember the 2015 Royal Rumble? I don’t know if you remember that? I lost, very quickly. That’s the one that Roman Reigns won. It was in Philadelphia. I was in the ring for maybe 5 minutes. 5 minutes total in that Royal Rumble, but when Roman Reigns won, everybody booed. The Rock congratulated him. The Rock saying, “oh man, you’re the man,” and The Rock putting Roman over, people booed.

I have a theory as to why that is, and it’s this. I think you’re right, Roman Reigns might be the best right now. He’s performing at a whole different level than everybody else, but he doesn’t wrestle with his heart. It’s a facade, always has been. He came out there when he debuted in this company wearing a vest, a bulletproof vest so you couldn’t see his heart. I have a theory that why they connected with me, this happens every night, I put my heart out there. That happened on SmackDown, right. I’ve been wrestling for 21 years, Paul. You go out there and you’ve been out there for 30 minutes,45 minutes, a lot of guys that have been in this business as long as I have, they’d get on the apron. I get in there with a chance to fight The Miz, who I absolutely hate, and there’s no place in the world I’d rather be. So the big difference is not about who’s the best or who wants glory, it’s who’s willing to go out there and fight with heart.”

Daniel Bryan is the bookies favourite to win the Royal Rumble match tomorrow night and go on to face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania, a match that WWE was reportedly actually planning on having take place at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

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Thanks to Fightful for the transcription.

• Roman Reigns
• Daniel Bryan
• Royal Rumble
• wwe

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