ABOUT AN HOUR into our flight, Joe Anoa'i tells me a secret: Roman Reigns isn't going to win the Royal Rumble. As far as spoilers go, this is akin to finding out who was getting whacked on The Sopranos the night before an episode aired—and if James Gandolfini was tipping you off. Anoa'i, after all, knows Reigns the same way Gandolfini knew Tony Soprano. Or like Terry Bollea knows Hulk Hogan.

Since 2012, Anoa'i has performed as Roman Reigns in the great American soap opera that is World Wrestling Entertainment. He has sculpted the character, tinkered with his look and mannerisms, ultimately transforming Reigns from an awkward "babyface" (good guy) to a commanding "heel" (bad guy). "I'm very passionate about being a storyteller, being able to dive into a character and wear a different skin," Anoa'i says. "That's the beauty of wrestling and what we do every single week. I can become this Roman Reigns guy."

They aren't the same guy, not entirely anyway. Anoa'i is laid-back, a self-described introvert who says he's most comfortable as part of a team; Reigns is domineering and megalomaniacal, qualities that he channels in his two-word catchphrase: "Acknowledge me." Anoa'i is a father of five who performs morning drop-off duty; Reigns is known as the Tribal Chief, a Mob-style boss who rules over his family with an iron fist. But in professional wrestling, the best characters are often amplified versions of the performer. "We just turn the dial up," he says. "My normal level is a 5 or a 4, but when it's time to work, we turn it up to a 10 or an 11."

At this moment, somewhere above the southeastern United States, Reigns is nowhere to be found. It's just Anoa'i and an entourage that includes his on- and off-screen collaborator Paul Heyman. We're heading to Indianapolis for the Royal Rumble, one of WWE's tentpole events. The winner of the rumble traditionally gets a title shot at WrestleMania, WWE's equivalent of the Super Bowl, which for Reigns would mean yet another match against Cody Rhodes. They squared off at the previous two 'Manias, with Reigns losing the undisputed WWE universal champion title in last year's main event. "Three in a row seems a bit much," Anoa'i admits. "To keep different trajectories right now between Cody and I, keep us a little bit separate, isn't a bad thing."

Anoa'i can stomach a loss as long as the best storyline wins. And like any member of an ensemble, he knows that even the star must occasionally step to the periphery in order to make way for other characters and arcs. "We have a nice cast of guys and superstars who can fill that role," he says. Reigns has been the unquestioned headliner of that cast, holding the universal championship for three and a half years and appearing in a record nine main events at WrestleMania. Those credentials have also made Reigns the face of WWE, a designation once bestowed upon the likes of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and John Cena.

What distinguishes Reigns is that he has been the marquee draw during the company's most prosperous era. In 2023, WWE was acquired by Endeavor and merged with the Dana White-led Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), forming a publicly traded company called TKO Group Holdings that reportedly has a market cap of around $24.3 billion. Meanwhile, WWE's flagship weekly program, Raw, is now on Netflix as part of a $5 billion deal inked last year, making it just a click away from the likes of Stranger Things and Squid Game.

Beyond pop culture, WWE's sphere of influence has extended to politics, never more so than in our current epoch. Donald Trump himself was inducted in WWE's hall of fame for his memorable cameo at WrestleMania in 2007, where he participated in the Battle of the Billionaires against Vince McMahon, the charismatic former WWE boss whose rise and fall was chronicled last year in a six-part Netflix documentary. Linda McMahon, Vince's wife, served in Trump's first administration and has been appointed secretary of education. (The couple are now separated.)

IN THE TRUMP ERA, WRESTLING HAS BEEN HELD UP AS A ROSETTA STONE FOR UNDERSTANDING MODERN POLITICS. "TO BE HONEST," ANOA'I SAYS, "THE WORLD SEEMS TO BE MORE LIKE WRESTLING THAN ANY OTHER FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT."

WWE's clout is such that someone like Anoa'i could conceivably land in Washington or Hollywood, following the likes of Cena and Johnson from the ring to the silver screen. He had a small part in Hobbs & Shaw, the 2019 Fast & Furious spin-off starring Johnson and Jason Statham. And in The Pickup, a forthcoming heist comedy, Anoa'i will appear in a scene with Eddie Murphy and Keke Palmer. "He probably shows as much charisma that I've ever seen from a celebrity or nonactor," says Tim Story, who directed The Pickup. "I think his future in front of the camera will be ridiculous."

Anoa'i will turn 40 in May, as evidenced by the faint streaks of gray in his long dark hair and beard. He is wary of his "bump card," the number of knocks a wrestler absorbs before he can no longer step in the ring. There are, it seems, only so many times a guy can take a metal chair to the back. Anoa'i's current deal with WWE expires after WrestleMania next year, and he admits that he is closer to the end than the beginning. "After I finish the contract that I'm in, we probably got another year or two max," he says. "Then it's time to take on a less physical form of entertainment."

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HOURS BEFORE WE depart for Indianapolis, Anoa'i is in his personal gym for a preflight workout. He says he'll keep it light this afternoon—just enough to give him a nice pump before the following night's match, where he will go shirtless before a television audience of millions. As Anoa'i tells it, the quality of his physique can be gauged by the amount of clothing he's wearing. "You can go through my history and see when I was in good shape or when I was covered up," he says.

Of course, what Anoa'i considers bad shape would be aspirational for most of us. And what he describes as a light workout spans three hours, leaving his black Jordan-brand T-shirt drenched in sweat. He and his trainer, Miguel Molina, take turns using various machines and dumbbells in a fully stocked gym located in the backyard of Anoa'i's Miami-area mansion, which sits in a gated community that includes entertainers and professional athletes. Molina works with various NBA and NFL players, but Anoa'i is the rare client who is actually stronger. "I'm trying to keep up with him," Molina says.

Anoa'i's intense fitness regimen, working out five to six days a week and adhering to a strict meal plan, is necessary to maintain his Adonis-like build. But he says it is also about giving him a sense of control—something today's travel schedule threatens to rupture. "This flight will kind of fuck shit up a bit and make me hold a little bit of water," he explains. That won't do. If his look isn't right, then his performance will suffer. And if his performance suffers—well, you get the idea.

Anoa'i is a homebody, living with his wife, Galina, and their five children: two sets of twin boys, ages five and eight, and a daughter who will be a senior in high school in the fall. "My kids used to think I just work out for a living," Anoa'i says. After the workout, both sets of twins wander into the gym, aimlessly exploring the equipment. As Anoa'i looks on, he predicts that at least one of the boys will follow his path to WWE. "They're going to be nurtured to think, like, Well, everybody's just living a wrestling life," he says. "That's what you're supposed to do, just train and eat."

For Anoa'i, wrestling is as much a birthright as a family business. Dubbed the Samoan Dynasty, the Anoa'i clan is widely considered pro wrestling's greatest family—although not every member is related biologically. "High Chief" Peter Maivia, who was the grandfather of Johnson, or The Rock, is considered the patriarch of the family. Maivia forged the connection with the family by taking a "blood oath" with Anoa'i's grandfather Reverend Amituana'i Anoa'i.

His father, Sika, formed a tag team duo with his uncle, Afa, known as the Wild Samoans, that rose to prominence in the 1980s. (Sika and Afa passed away within two months of each other last summer.) His brother Matt, who died unexpectedly in 2017, had performed in WWE under the name Rosey. Growing up in Pensacola, Florida, Anoa'i was nearly inseparable from his twin cousins, Joshua and Jonathan Fatu, who now perform in WWE as Jey and Jimmy Uso. Their father, Solofa Fatu, performed in WWE for years as Rikishi.

Anoa'i's parents separated when he was young, and while he lived with his "superhero" mother, Patricia, he recalls bonding with his father over wrestling. They followed the "Monday night wars" between WWE (then known as WWF) and World Championship Wrestling and would quiz each other about the matches. It was also an education for Sika, who was watching the wrestling business change in real time. Back then, WWE was pivoting toward more adult-oriented programming as it entered what is known as the Attitude Era—a far cry from the more campy heyday of the Wild Samoans.

For a time, the gridiron, rather than the ring, looked like Anoa'i's gateway. He was a standout high school football player and earned a scholarship to Georgia Tech, where he was teammates with future NFL Hall of Fame receiver Calvin Johnson. He starred on the defensive line at Tech, being selected as a team captain and earning first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference honors his senior year. It was there where he met Galina, who was a member of the school's track-and-field team.

Anoa'i gave the NFL a go, first attending rookie minicamp with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2007. The experience was both brief and traumatic. After Anoa'i's physical, team trainers spotted something amiss with his bloodwork that turned out to be chronic myeloid leukemia. "It was the biggest mental fuck that I've ever had in my life," he recalls. The diagnosis brought Anoa'i's time with the Vikings to an abrupt end as he began a period of oral chemotherapy. After the disease was treated, Anoa'i signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars at the tail end of training camp, ultimately getting released in the team's final round of cuts. He spent a season in the Canadian Football League with the Edmonton Eskimos before being released.

By then, Anoa'i and his wife had welcomed their daughter, and the newly minted dad needed a job. He returned to Pensacola and worked for his older sister Vanessa's office furniture installation company, alongside his twin cousins. The three spent their days assembling task chairs and their nights closing down a local bar. "That was the bit of normalcy I needed to teach me: This isn't what I want," he says.

"ROMAN HAS A PROFOUND PRESENCE IN PERSON AT THE WWE LIVE EVENTS" AND "A SERIOUSNESS AND PATIENCE RARELY SEEN IN A PERFORMER," SAYS RECORD PRODUCER AND PRO-WRESTLING DIEHARD RICK RUBIN.

A visit from his dad to the warehouse proved clarifying. As Anoa'i put together an office chair, Sika looked on with bemusement. "He just told me in a very condescending, belittling way, 'How long are you going to build your sister's chairs?' " recalls Anoa'i, who responded with a well-executed reversal. "I said, 'Well, I guess I'll be doing this until you teach me how to wrestle.' " Sika beamed. Then he made some calls. Soon, Anoa'i was off to Tampa, where he began his tutelage at Florida Championship Wrestling, WWE's developmental promotion that has since been rebranded as NXT.

Debuting under the name Leakee, Anoa'i was almost immediately pegged for stardom. Paul Levesque, WWE's chief content officer who was then overseeing the developmental territory, left a meeting with Anoa'i convinced that he had found the next face of the company. Levesque turned to Dusty Rhodes, the late father of Cody who was training Anoa'i at FCW, and laid down a marker.

"I remember walking out to Dusty and saying, 'God, if that fucking Leakee kid is not a top guy here in 10 years, I don't know what the fuck we're doing,' " says Levesque, who is perhaps better known by his ring name, Triple H. "It's not just a look. It's an intangible factor," he adds. "I get asked this all the time when we do tryouts: What is it we're looking for? I'm looking for that."

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THE AMERICAN FLAG that flies above WWE's headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, is 76 feet wide and 40 feet tall. It was raised there just before Veterans Day in 2023 because, as Vince McMahon put it at the time, "not too many flags fly these days." McMahon's claim that it is "one of the largest flags in the country" also seems like a stretch, given that it's the same type of oversized Old Glory found at car dealership lots across the country.

But then, McMahon was always known for puffery, which might have been the least of his sins. The longtime WWE patriarch has been gone from the company for more than a year now, following a lawsuit from a former employee, Janel Grant, who accused McMahon of sexual assault and trafficking, as well as physical and emotional abuse. (McMahon has denied the allegations. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.)

McMahon had survived lawsuits and scandals before. In 2022, following allegations that he made hush-money payments to former employees to conceal alleged sexual misconduct, McMahon retired as CEO of WWE. But he returned six months later in January 2023 as a board member in an effort to engineer a sale of the company, ultimately leading to WWE's merger with UFC. McMahon was tapped to serve as executive chairman of the conglomerate, but with new stakeholders and board members to answer to, he no longer had impunity. That became clear on January 26, 2024, when McMahon resigned from his role at TKO one day after Grant's lawsuit was filed. (McMahon agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle SEC charges in January after failing to disclose two alleged hush-money payments. In a statement at the time, McMahon characterized the payments as "minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments.")

Anoa'i tells me that the allegations from Grant are a stain on WWE. "She's got to live with all these situations that happened and hopefully she's in a place where she feels comfortable and she's secure in her own place," he says of Grant. "It's embarrassing. That's stuff you don't want to hear about. You don't want your family to hear about." Anoa'i says McMahon reached out last year to wish him a happy birthday, but the former CEO and chairman has, by all accounts, completely removed himself from WWE affairs. Last spring he sold the last of his remaining shares in TKO Group Holdings.

But McMahon's legacy still looms over the company. He built WWE into a juggernaut by tapping into the power of television, bringing wrestling to a national audience in the 1980s with Saturday Night's Main Event on NBC. The company evolved with the medium, launching its own over-the-top network in 2014 before phasing it out and migrating its content to the NBC-owned streamer Peacock in 2021. McMahon's legacy is also evident in WWE stars such as Roman Reigns. The company's consistent ability to refill its talent pool and tailor its programming to multiple generations is reminiscent of another institution of American television, Saturday Night Live.

"Roman Reigns is a massive star and completely unique. We often say at WWE that the next star never looks like the last star. As John Cena winds down his career, it has been great to see our current perennial Wrestle Mania main eventer, Roman Reigns, look, sound, and act in a completely different way than anyone you have seen previously at WWE," says Nick Khan, the president of WWE.

McMahon's eye for talent eventually landed on Anoa'i, who was elevated from FCW to WWE's main roster in 2012. Reigns was originally part of a faction known as the Shield, which included the wrestlers Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose. The trio was well-received by fans, but it was clear that Reigns was the one being fast-tracked to the main-event tier. By 2014, the Shield disbanded and Reigns embarked on a singles career. He was presented as a babyface who called himself "the Big Dog," but the audience booed him as if he were a heel. WWE fans can be ruthless and unforgiving, especially to a performer they believe is being foisted upon them by the company. "They're an educated fan base, and they're just not going to have someone who's not 100 percent ready pushed onto them because those flaws are apparent. They were able to see the holes in my game, the inexperience that was still lingering over me," Anoa'i says. "It was very simple. They were honest and I wasn't."

In 2018 Reigns appeared on Raw and introduced himself by his real name, revealing to the crowd that his leukemia had returned. The announcement led to an outpouring of support for Anoa'i, but it didn't put Reigns completely over with fans. "I thought, Okay, you really can't boo a guy who came back from leukemia and there's going to be sympathy," says Dave Meltzer, a journalist who has been covering pro wrestling for more than 50 years. "There was [sympathy], but it didn't have the reaction that I thought, It kind of told me the fan base doesn't care about the person, but they sure care about the character."

The breakthrough for Anoa'i and his character came during the pandemic. While the NBA and other leagues suspended their seasons, WWE plowed ahead, broadcasting from its empty training facility in Orlando. Anoa'i, however, initially stayed home due to his immunocompromised status. He even considered hanging it up over his frustrations with the character. "I was prepared to walk away if we weren't going to be able to do what I felt was right for me creatively at the time," he says.

McMahon went to Anoa'i with a proposal: What would he think about teaming up with Paul Heyman? A cinephile with a Hitchcockian look, Heyman has worn just about every hat in the wrestling business. He was the owner of a renegade promotion called Extreme Championship Wrestling and a commentator for WWE, while also serving as onscreen manager for a host of different wrestlers. Behind the scenes, Heyman is known as a sounding board for WWE talent and executives alike, drawing from his repository of pop culture knowledge to help develop characters and storylines. If pro wrestling is an art form—and it is—then Heyman is an auteur, willing to do whatever it takes to summon the best performance.

"If you want me to play Scorsese to your De Niro or DiCaprio, if you want me to be David Chase to your Gandolfini, I'm going to have to say things to you and find vulnerability and sensitivity and trigger points in you that no other human being on the face of this planet would dare explore," Heyman recalls telling Anoa'i. "Not your wife, not your parents, not your children."

Heyman and Anoa'i gave Reigns an edge. They changed the character's look, ditching the blue contact lenses and swapping out the black vest for a wardrobe of athleisure, and leaned into the wrestler's lineage, creating a sinister stable known as the Bloodline that included Jey and Jimmy Uso. Heyman, meanwhile, was introduced as Reigns's obsequious onscreen manager who goes by "The Wiseman." When the new Roman Reigns returned as a heel in August 2020, wrestling fans were finally ready to embrace him. The Big Dog was put down. In his place came "the Tribal Chief."

Reigns had, seemingly overnight, become WWE's most compelling character—just as the company was about to go through its own radical transformation. And as the Tribal Chief drove some of the richest storylines on WWE's weekly morality play, its business experienced its most lucrative period ever. Anoa'i doesn't think that's a coincidence, and he believes he deserves credit for being a reliable headliner amid all the upheaval at the company and through the COVID pandemic. To put it another way: Anoa'i is ready for you to acknowledge him. "I was the top guy. The business did all that it did, and I was the one that was the marquee of it all," he says.

Soon, WWE will have to turn to a new top guy to put people in the seats, as Anoa'i begins to eye his post-WWE career. It is not difficult to envision Anoa'i, who is jacked and bears a resemblance to Jason Momoa, carving out a movie career as an action star or superhero. "He's a physical specimen," says David Leitch, the director of Hobbs Shaw, who is reportedly in talks to direct Ocean's 14, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt. "The camera loves him, the audience loves him, and the only thing standing in his way is his own ambition."

Anoa'i receives a lot of scripts, but his WWE responsibilities have precluded him from taking many roles. When the time comes for him to fully pursue acting, Anoa'i plans on being selective. "I almost want to model it after Tarantino, where we're not just doing anything and everything. I want to really plot out: I want this one, I want that one," Anoa'i says.

As our flight makes its descent for Indianapolis, I make the half serious suggestion that he might someday run for governor of Florida.

"You never know," he says with a smile. "You just never know."

He's joking, I think, but he's also right. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura made it to the statehouse, and a WWE hall of famer currently occupies the White House. Plus, Anoa'i boasts the profile—a football player turned wrestler who loves lifting weights—of someone who could flourish in an electoral climate currently defined by expressions of raw masculinity.

Anoa'i is a registered Democrat, but he considers himself a centrist. In the most recent election, however, he says the choice was "very clear."

"One person was giving us information. One person was answering questions, so it wasn't that hard," he says.

When I ask if that means that he backed Trump, Anoa'i pauses for a few seconds.

"I support our president. Trump is one of those guys where he's got a vast history and a huge background. He's been in entertainment. He's been in big business, politics," Anoa'i says. "At this point, I'm supporting a bright future for our country. Positive and competent leadership. For us to be what we're supposed to be—to be a world leader and carry that respect and do what a world power like us should be doing."

Anoa'i doesn't back everything the president does, like his penchant for nursing grievances against political rivals. "It's like he needs that adversary," he says. "He needs that opposition to bounce off of. He needs that competitive motivation or something." Trump's pugilistic approach, of course, is not unlike WWE's own template. It's why, in the Trump era, wrestling has been held up as a Rosetta stone for understanding modern politics.

"To be honest," Anoa'i says, "the world seems to be more like wrestling than any other form of entertainment."

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WE LAND IN Indianapolis on a cold, wet night, the sort of bleak, wintry conditions that compel you to stay inside and hunker down. And yet a smattering of WWE fans, young and old, are here, gathered outside the private airport. They hold replica WWE championship belts over their shoulders and hoist their index fingers in the air—a nod to Reigns's signature gesture.

Anoa'i is hungry, so we pile into a pair of Escalades and zoom along the dampened streets to a steakhouse downtown. Four men in their 20s, each with replica title belts of their own, loiter outside and look curiously toward our SUVs. With the assistance of his personal security guard, Anoa'i and Heyman give the autograph hounds the slip and enter the restaurant through the back.

"You have to, at all times, consider this could be a Mark David Chapman type of thing," Heyman says after we take our seats in a private room. "This could be a real fucking knucklehead." Anoa'i is a little spooked about the group at the airport, but he decides to accentuate the positive. "Good problems," he declares. "We call them 'blessed men problems.' "

"The time to worry is not when they're outside looking for you," Heyman replies. "The time to worry is when they're not."

That time isn't now. According to Levesque, Reigns is "the biggest needle mover on the ticket sales side" and a top merchandise seller. And he's got some famous fans. "Roman has a profound presence in person at the WWE live events" and "a seriousness and patience rarely seen in a performer," says Rick Rubin, the record producer and a pro-wrestling diehard since childhood. "It has been an historic run," Rubin adds, "and I hope it continues for a long, long time."

Being so highly in demand has left Anoa'i with an exhausting amount of corporate responsibilities. On the morning of the Royal Rumble, he and Heyman arrive at an Indianapolis barbershop to record promotional material for WWE 2K25, a new video game that features Reigns on the cover. Anoa'i is quickly briefed on the concept for each promo before he seamlessly shifts into character once the cameras start rolling. In one video, Anoa'i (as Reigns) and Heyman heckle a developer for the video game while he plays.

"Can somebody tell me why we have a developer without a cheat code?" Heyman says in a moment of improvisation. After about 10 minutes the videographers get the footage they need and Reigns goes back to being Anoa'i. "Well done," he tells the developer.

WWE stars spend their entire careers flipping that switch, constantly toggling between self and alter ego. For the uninitiated it is not always easy to draw the distinction. At the barbershop I overhear a woman involved with the video game ask a colleague how to address Anoa'i. "Best practice is to call them by their character name," he tells her. "Especially at an event like this."

We head to Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts and the site of this year's Royal Rumble. As I stroll around hours before the gates open, it feels like I have stumbled upon a traveling circus company. There are muscular men and women in brightly colored attire and a small army of production personnel, all hurtling from the locker rooms to craft services.

Inside the bowl of the stadium, rehearsal plays out in the ring. Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens walk through a maneuver they will pull off in their ladder match. Meanwhile, Cena and Jey Uso pantomime the moves that will end the night's main event (and crown Uso the winner of the rumble). Outside the ring, Levesque talks to the YouTube personality IShowSpeed, who will make a surprise appearance at the event, while WWE luminaries such as Ric Flair meander about the premises. Anoa'i calmly strolls up and down the entrance ramp, his head bowed meditatively.

Backstage, closer to showtime, Heyman discusses a forthcoming storyline with the Scottish wrestler Drew McIntyre (real name: Andrew McLean Galloway IV). Heyman grabs his phone and pulls up a clip from Peaky Blinders in which the character played by Tom Hardy profanely berates a crew of bootleggers. Channel that, he tells McIntyre, who nods approvingly before walking out of the room. "Another satisfied customer," Heyman says.

By 6 p.m. local time, there are around 70,000 customers inside the stadium, making it the largest gate ever for a single-night WWE event. The next four and a half hours will be filled with pyrotechnics, acrobatics, and blood, all culminating with the eponymous main event. A spin on the traditional battle royale, the Royal Rumble is a glorious clusterfuck involving 30 wrestlers, with a new performer entering the ring every 90 seconds.

This year's cavalcade builds toward the final entrant, the online influencer Logan Paul, who has a contract with WWE. The inclusion of Paul and IShowSpeed shows how the company has managed to stay current, adapting its output to appeal to each new generation. It's also a window into the WWE business model, which is dependent on kids. There are plenty of adult fans here at the Royal Rumble, but the majority of them almost certainly started watching in their youth. It is comparatively more lighthearted than a UFC event, where the brutality is on full display and the vibe is similar to a Trump rally. Khan, citing Nielsen data, told me there is only about a 13 percent overlap between WWE and UFC viewers, which tracks with my own experience attending both. At the Royal Rumble, where there are at least two adult fans cosplaying as '80s icon "Macho Man" Randy Savage, the atmosphere is more Comic-Con than MAGA.

When Roman Reigns's entrance music plays midway through, the crowd roars as thousands of index fingers are pointed to the sky. A short time later, after entering the ring, Reigns engages in a stare-down with several rivals, including Cena, prompting the thousands in attendance to chant, "This is awesome."

It is easy to understand why so many wrestlers struggle to walk away from the ring and continue to put their bodies through torture. The pop from the crowd is euphoric and addictive. Anoa'i could well become a box office star—or, hell, even a politician—but he may never get the ovation that he has here at the Royal Rumble. As Roman Reigns stands in the ring, basking in the ovation, I keep thinking about what Joe Anoa'i told me the night before on the plane.

"There's nothing like it. I do this, they do that," he said. "There's nothing like that control."

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