“All I Heard Was Cancer”: Roman Reigns Opens Up on His Unfortunate Exit From The Minnesota Vikings

Roman Reigns came victorious against Drew McIntyre at the WWE Clash at the Castle, to continue his undisputed reign of 700+ days. Reigns won the championship after defeating, Bray Wyatt, and Braun Strowman, and has not looked back since then. The Tribal Chief has positioned himself as the top heel in the company, along with The Bloodline and Paul Heyman.

Reigns has had a wild journey so far in WWE. He made his main-roster debut alongside Seth Rollins, and Jon Moxley aka Dean Ambrose, as a part of The Shield. The Stable went quickly over with the fans, and become extremely popular. After their eventual fallout, all three of them had a successful singles career.

Recently, Roman Reigns sat down with Logan Paul for his podcast ‘IMPAULSIVE’ where the duo talked about different things, including Reigns’ leukemia. Paul asked Reigns about the time when he first got to know about his cancer.

The Big Dog started by referencing his free agent deal with the Minnesota Vikings in 2007. He said, “Yeah! I did a free agent deal with the vikings.” When Logan Paul asked him if that was the first time he found out about his leukemia, Reigns responded by telling him the whole story. He said, “Well, technically, I wasn’t, 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 is attacking something, it’s fighting off something.’ So they were like, ‘Yeah it could be anything, venereal disease, infection and cancer.'”

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Reigns then stated that, the moment he heard cancer, he was stunned. He claimed, “All I heard was cancer. 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 and we did all the blood labs and everything. You know, all the standard physicals that you do, went through practice, it was a non-padded but it’s still you know, you are doing some stuff, you are still competing.”

The 37-year-old continued, “Had a fairly good practice and then watched film. As soon as I came out of film, the whole trading staff was right there. I am looking behind, hopefully its this guy behind me that they are getting, but they were pointing at me.”

Roman Reigns further claimed that he was sent home from his rookie camp, and even marked during the NFL draft and how much of an uphill battle it was for him from there on.

Roman Reigns opens up on handling his emotions and knowing about his cancer

When Reigns was further asked how that moment felt, he said, “So, I compartmentalize emotions sometimes, So I think it was just so overwhelming that it wasn’t even believable. This was back in 2007, so this was years ago and like you hear about younger people with blood cancer more often now but back then, a 21-year-old straight out of college, a division one football player, supposed to be a kind of peak health.”

He continued, “You never would expect that. So they put a huge Asterix next to my name when it came to the NFL. So it was just an uphill battle from there, man.” Paul further asked if he was sent home from there, which Reigns approved.

Roman Reigns said, “Oh yeah! They sent me home once we got like all the proper oncology work back and the blood work back. They ended up releasing me just because you know.” However, Reigns claimed that he could do nothing there because it was a medical release and it was justified. Since then, Reigns made his debut in WWE, and has become one of the top sought stars in the company.

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