Roman Reigns Was An Absolute NIGHTMARE To Write For... (WWE News)

In a recent interview with Sportshadow, former WWE writer Jimmy Jacobs has provided a fascinating insight into a whole variety of topics, including naming Roman Reigns as "the toughest wrestler to write for."

A veteran in-ring talent of ROH prior to joining WWE, Jacobs worked on the market leader's creative team from early 2015 through late 2017, ultimately being fired after he posted a photo online of himself with the Young Bucks, Adam Page, and Marty Scurll outside a Raw taping.

This latest interview with Jimmy finds him covering the general WWE creative process, working for Vince McMahon, being heavily involved in notable segments such as the famed Festival of Friendship with Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens, the differences working for Tony Khan and AEW, and plenty, plenty more.

Specifically, Jimmy Jacobs said that Roman Reigns was the toughest wrestler to write for, not down to Roman himself, but more down to how the Roman Reigns character was presented at that time, and also due to how hands-on Vince McMahon was with the Big Dog.

As Jacobs explains:

"The toughest wrestler to write for was Roman Reigns during the 2015–2016 period. Although I worked with him only minimally, he was a babyface who lacked a strong, defined character voice at the time. We were still trying to find his specific identity.

This difficulty was compounded by the fact that Vince McMahon was incredibly hands-on with Roman.

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Vince had decided that Roman was the "next guy," so all eyes remained constantly on everything Roman did. Roman had not yet found the strong voice that eventually emerged with the "Bloodline" storyline.

My critique is not a slight against Roman himself; rather, it is an observation that writing for a top babyface without a strong voice is inherently difficult.

Heels have more creative freedom; you can be ridiculous or go "off the wall" with a heel character. However, the creative path for a babyface is much narrower, especially when you reach the top of the card where so much is riding on the performance.

An undercard babyface can get away with saying something generic, like "I’m going to kick your ass," but when you are at the top, the expectations are higher.

Finding a voice that the audience will genuinely like within that narrow path proved to be very difficult."

Elsewhere in this interview, Jimmy says how much he enjoyed working for WWE, but that he "had a very difficult time working for Vince," that "much of the culture there was based on a fear of" McMahon, and that Jacobs "went from trying to do the best possible thing to simply trying to figure out what would not get me in trouble" with the since-disgraced former WWE Chairman.

As for AEW, Jimmy Jacobs noted how Tony Khan's promotion existed on "the opposite side of that spectrum" to the rigid, strict WWE structure he worked under, highlighting how the benefit of this approach is the extended freedom given to talent and coaches, but he also labelled the downside to this as a "pathology of chaos" where matches can "step on" one another as different performers do the same things or use the same moves.