Roman Reigns never stopped fighting, but never got his due
With WrestleMania 39 set to kick off on April 1, and Polygon contributor Abraham Josephine Riesman’s new book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America set to enter the ring on March 28, we’re spending the week grappling with pro wrestling — and everything it’s shaped.
There are two ways of reading Roman Reigns’ go-to taunt, “Acknowledge me.”
The first is as the WWE wrestler intends it: As he said it to Jey Uso in 2020 and to everyone who has stepped to him since, “acknowledge me” is a demand, an order to recognize Reigns as the Tribal Chief, the Head of the Table, or the Big Dog, if nostalgia is your thing. It’s what Paul Heyman does when he cowers and says, “Yes, my Tribal Chief,” or goes into his long-standing “reigning, defending” bit. It’s what the Bloodline does when they carry out Reigns’ orders or back down from him.
It is, at long last, what WWE fans do when Roman Reigns is in the wrestling ring.
But that wasn’t always so. A second read of Reigns’ catchphrase shades his role as the most important wrestler currently in WWE, and arguably the world. Beneath the armor of his tough-guy swagger, his deliberately paced promos, his impressive list of title defenses, and a two-and-a-half-year run as WWE’s top champion, a run that saw him unify the Universal and WWE Championships at last year’s WrestleMania 38, is a plea: Acknowledge me.
Roman Reigns, real name Joe Anoaʻi, was supposed to become WWE’s top babyface in 2015. That was a big deal — WWE is driven by babyfaces, the good guys, and being on top of that pile means being the focus of WWE’s storytelling, its top box-office attraction, and acting as its most visible standard-bearer. If you know nothing about wrestling but know a couple of
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