It has been bravely discussed how Roman Reigns, the Unified WWE Universal Champion, first found out he was battling leukemia and how it led to a big career change for him.
When Roman Reigns announced that he had been diagnosed with leukemia and had to take time away and relinquish the Universal Championship, the world of wrestling was saddened and shocked. Thankfully, just four months later, Reigns returned, announcing that he was in remission from his cancer.
The disease was initially identified in Reigns, a youthful soccer player with the Minnesota Vikings, while The Tribal Chief encountered the battle of his life because of the illness, which was not the initial occurrence.
During his appearance on the IMPAULSIVE podcast with Logan Paul, Reigns talked about the moment he became aware that something was amiss.
“We weren’t quite sure… this is where we saw the blood labs that showed the elevated white blood cells, which clearly says your body’s attacking something. It’s fighting off something. So they were like, yeah, it could be anything. Yeah, I mean, venereal disease, infection, to cancer. And then I’m just… all I heard was cancer and like, whoa, it got super heavy. So I had to go home from there.”
“So that was rookie camp. I got up to Minnesota, did rookie camp woke up before practice, we did all the blood labs and everything, all the, you know, standard physicals that you do. Went through practice; it was a non-padded practice, but it’s still, you know, you’re doing some stuff, you know, you’re still competing.”
“Had a fairly good practice, and then we watch film. As soon as I came out of film, the whole training staff was right there. I’m looking like man, hopefully, it’s this guy behind me that they’re getting but no, they were pointing at me, and yeah.”
Reigns ultimately departed from the Vikings as a consequence. He reveals that the announcement caught him off guard, considering he was a youthful football player expected to be in excellent physical condition. Roman Reigns elaborated on the details.
“So I compartmentalize emotion sometimes. So I think it was just so overwhelming that it wasn’t even believable, you know, and even then it was like, this is back in ’07. So this is years ago, and like, you hear about younger people with blood cancers more often now.”
“But back then a 21-year-old, you know, I mean, coming straight out of college, a division one football player, supposed to be kind of peak health, right? Like, you never would expect that. So it put a huge asterisk next to my name when it came to the NFL. So it was just an uphill battle from there, man.”
“Yeah, they sent me home. Once we got like all the proper oncology work back in the bloodwork back. They ended up releasing me just because there was just I mean, there was nothing we could do at that point.”
In the conversation, Roman Reigns also talked about a possible dream match between him and The Rock at WrestleMania.