WWE: Reigns & Heyman Pairing Update, Retribution Update, WWE 2K Battlegrounds Update

WWE’s Current Plans for Roman Reigns & Paul Heyman Pairing

Roman Reigns has been in an on-screen partnership with Paul Heyman since the August 28th episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that WWE’s current plans for the Reigns and Heyman partnership is for its dynamic to be as different as possible from Heyman’s previous partnership with Brock Lesnar. Meltzer reported that Heyman’s partnership with Lesnar revolved around their longtime friendship in WWE dating back to 2002 and Heyman being the person in charge of the pairing.

With the Reigns and Heyman partnership, Meltzer reported that the idea is for their pairing to be less friendly with Reigns being completely in charge of the pairing and Heyman being indebted to Reigns for saving his career after Lesnar left. Heyman changing from being an advocate of Lesnar to being a “special counsel” of Reigns is meant to help differentiate Heyman’s role in his new pairing. Meltzer also reported that Reigns being called the “Tribal Chief” is meant to be a call back to Peter Maivia’s role in wrestling and Samoan culture in the 1970s.

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Current Plans for Retribution

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that WWE officials current plans for Retribution is for the group to have five main people be the main focus for the group on television.

The five main people reportedly will be Dominik Dijakovic, Shane Thorne, Mercedes Martinez, and Mia Yim from the NXT brand and former Raw announcer Dio Maddin.

Meltzer also reported that this group is still planned to be exclusive to the RAW brand.

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Newest Patch for WWE 2K Battlegrounds Removes Tessa Blanchard Image

As noted before, an image representing the likeness of former Impact Wrestling talent Tessa Blanchard was discovered in an officially sponsored pre-release stream of WWE 2K Battlegrounds on Twitch.

The photographer of the original Blanchard photo, Basil Mahmud, stated on Twitter that he did not give permission for his photo to be used in the game but has spoken to 2K Games to resolve the issue.

2K Games released a new patch for the game earlier today that removed the image of Blanchard’s likeness and replaced it with a different image for the game’s Royal Rumble mode.