Roman Reigns is performing the character work of his life right now, but he wasn't always the cool 'Tribal Chief'.

As The Head of the Table, Roman has taken SmackDown on his back, and is carrying it with the greatest of ease.

Still the WWE Universal Champion, and flanked by his Uso brethren, forming The Bloodline, Roman is undoubtedly the most must-watch star in WWE right now.

However, it wasn't always that way.

Roman has had to endure some polarising fan reactions throughout his main roster career since the split of The Shield.

And one such example, often cited by his critics, saw him deliver a promo back on January 9th, 2015, after interrupting Mr Money In The Bank Seth Rollins on SmackDown.

Roman made his way to the ring, having received a pretty large pop from those fans in attendance.

He came through the crowd, then a smiling babyface, and got into the ring with Seth and J&J Security, made up of Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury.

Roman apologised for interrupting, then recanted, insisting "no, no, I'm not sorry".

He went on to claim that Seth was full of himself but was actually "full of something else".

The rest of the promo really needs to be written in full, so here it is: "You are a snivelling, little suck-up, sell out, full of suffering succotash son. Yeah, I know, that was not easy to say!"

Roman then winked at the camera.

It's not exactly poetry, and it was a prime example of Roman being forced to read from a script, rather than being allowed to come up with zingers off the cuff.

Suffering succotash, in case you were wondering, used to be said by Sylvester The Cat, who appeared in various Looney Tunes cartoons.

Roman actually ended the promo by saying, "what I'm saying is, I'm gonna kick your a**."

That's the kind of character work we expect from Roman, and is far more in line with his character now, which can hold its own with the very best we have seen in WWE.

Sometimes you need to have the embarrassing moments like this in order to appreciate being at the top of your game.

And Roman is certainly at the top of his game.