Roman Reigns On Messing Up Against Brock Lesnar At WrestleMania 31 & Expectations Against The Undertaker

WWE Superstar Roman Reigns was recently interviewed on In This Corner podcast about a number of topics including his match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 31 and if his match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33 lived up to expectations. Below are some highlights courtesy of Bill Pritchard of WrestleZone.com.

On His Match Against Brock Lesnar At WrestleMania 31:

"Right off the bat you can see it, I hit him right under the eye and split him a little bit, so he got a bit of color. From there, I knew I messed up. He scooped me up and rammed me into the [turnbuckles] and cracked my ribs. A lot of people don’t realize after that match, I wrestled for a quarter of the year with messed up ribs where I could barely breathe. If it appeared that I was blown up through that portion of my career it was because I really was. I wrestled Big Show, he was my next rivalry after that, and I wrestled him for a month or so and the whole time I was feeling the repercussions of stepping into the ring with Brock Lesnar. We’ve all seen it, we all know it, so any time you have a one on one match with a guy like Brock, you have to bring a different mentality. You have to understand the story is simple—we’re performers and we’re here to put on a show—when you’re in there with a guy that has a huge bravado and a huge reputation like Brock, and it’s legitimate — he did a crap ton of work to get there, with a lot of doubters, I’m sure— but he has to protect himself. And it has to be another level of physicality. I think we did that a couple years ago, and hopefully we’ll be able to come back and deliver another great match."

Did His WrestleMania 33 Match Against The Undertaker Live Up To His Expectations?:

"I don’t think that it ever could, really. It’s a hard spot to be The Undertaker, to have such a storied career, to have such — a huge list of ridiculously good matches, and to have that respect and that mystique, to have that repuatation as ‘The Godfather’ of the professional wrestling and sports entertainment business. Everybody has thought about what would it be like to be in a match with The Undertaker at Wrestlemania. You hype it up so much that it’s almost unfair to him. For me, what made it really hard was how heavy it was. If I wrestled Undertaker 20 years ago in the beginning of his career, the middle of it—would it be like that? Probably not. The position that I found myself it just felt really heavy and so much more emotional than I was ready for it to be.

I think that was the hardest thing, but [also] the coolest thing. I think that just shows the gravity of the situation and the responsibility of the placement, and just who I was sharing the ring with. That’s how special of a character, and kind of what we were talking about before, the politics, the backstage —obviously nobody navigated that path better than The Undertaker. Everybody that you could think of in this business, as far as WWE is concerned, has a huge amount of respect to that man. I just feel like in some way I wasn’t good enough. Maybe it could have been better on my behalf, but I always hold Undertaker so high in that regard that I just feel like maybe I could have been better. I enjoyed it, I really learned a huge amount in the ring with him, to only be in there a couple times and one singles match, and especially to have it at that level — to be able to just pick something up out there in 30-40 minutes from another performer just goes to show how good he is. I’ve shared the ring with a lot of really good wrestlers, and to be able to pick up on stuff he does, and to see the difference first person, up front and personal, it really was special.

I’m very proud of that because I’m going to be one of the only guys who said they’ve been in the ring and wrestled with The Undertaker. John Cena gets the opportunity to do it this year, and it’s not the same for him because he’s been in the locker room with [Undertaker]. He’s shared a tour bus with him, they’ve been around the world together and shared the same locker room. A lot of guys in our locker room now can’t say that."

Listen to the full episode below.