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What Is Roman Reigns’ Real Name? All You Need To Know About WWE Superstar
Here’s everything you need to know about Roman Reigns’ real name, and how did he zero in on his WWE ring name.
Roman Reign’s real name is Leatee Joseph Anoa’i. More often he is also called Joe Anoa’i, but it’s his WWE ring name ‘Roman Reigns’ by which he is known worldwide.
WWE superstars when they enter wrestling, rarely use their real names as ring names. For example, The Undertaker’s real name is Mark Calaway. CM Punk’s real name is Phil Brooks. Seth Rollins’ real name is Colby Daniel Lopez and so on.
Rarely do wrestlers in WWE use their real names as ring names. John Cena is a rare exception. And even then, his real name was John Felix Anthony Cena, and in WWE he removed the middle part and kept the first and last words as his name.
Coming back to Roman Reigns, one wonders how he came to this name. Was it given to him or did Roman himself pitch this ring-name to the WWE? The truth is Roman Reigns himself pitched the name to WWE.
When he entered WWE in 2010 through Florida Championship Wrestling (now NXT) it was Roman who pitched the first part. During a Talk is Jericho episode, The Big Dog said that he wanted to wrestle as ‘Roman’ only, but he was asked to get a surname too.
So what he did was, he took the other half of his name from another guy in FCW whose name was Calvin Raines. WWE had released him, and then Joe cashed in on it. " I wanted Roman only, and they were like, 'no, you need a last name'. And there's actually another guy in FCW by the name of Calvin Raines. He spelled it like 'rain', like a 'raindrop'. And they, I believe, released him and sorry, brother... Roman Raines sounded good to me, so they were like, 'alright, give me four or five different names,” he said.
So how did ‘Raines’ become ‘Reigns’? The Big Dog revealed that it happened after a suggestion from his friend Corey Graves. Graves suggested the name “Roman Reigns” instead of “Roman Raines”, and it clicked with the former WWE Champion.
Also Read: Roman Reigns’ Win Percentage in Legendary WWE Career; Explored
“He’s actually one of my good buddies and our families are like really good friends. He told me, he was like, ‘hey, I heard you saying ‘Roman Raines’. What if you spelled it like, ‘Reigns’, like a king Reigns.’ And I was like, ‘whoa, I like that.’ And there you go. And total heel name too!,” Reigns said on the podcast with Chris Jericho.
The former WWE Champion also revealed that he also wrestled as Roman Leakee in 2010 when he started with FCW wrestling. But when he made his main roster debut as part of The Shield in November 2012, along with Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, he was given the ring name Roman Reigns.
As for his current WWE standing, Roman Reigns has been the face of the company for a decade now, and has main-evented WrestleMania, a whopping 9 times, which is the biggest for any superstar in the history of WWE. His reign as WWE Champion for 1,316 days is also one of the longest in WWE.
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