Roman Reigns Talks Protecting His Daughter From His Leukemia Doubters

Roman Reigns opened up about his return from battling leukemia in an interview with the Los [...]

By Connor Casey

Roman Reigns opened up about his return from battling leukemia in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

While many fans celebrated when Reigns announced his cancer was in remission back on Feb. 25, a small percentage of fans began launching conspiracy theories online that his cancer wasn't legitimate.

While Reigns never gave those theorists the time of day, he did reveal in the interview that he wanted to protect his 11-year-old daughter Joelle from those people.

"I've been with my wife since college, so she has been through this whole process with me," Reigns said. "My big concern was my daughter, who is 11. So she's right at that age where she's hearing all those misguided opinions and hearing different things from different people. I thought that as long as she hears it from me, 'This is what is going on with Dad, and I don't want you to worry,' that she would be OK. And she's been great.

"It's hard, because as fathers and providers we want to protect," he added. "I'm so used to putting them in front of me and putting everyone first and making sure everything is OK. I learned it's OK to sometimes put ourselves first when it comes to our health because then we can get healthy and take care of everyone else again."

In a recent episode of the WWE Chronicle documentary series, Reigns spoke about when he learned of his diagnosis of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML).

"I was at a live event, I believe it was either a Saturday or a Sunday," Reigns said.
I just remember one of our doctors telling me that something was going on with my blood tests and they wanted to do another one because they thought something was off. So I went in and did another one and then I remember going to TV on Monday. I remember one of the refs coming up to me and usually they'll be like 'you're needed in TR [Talent Relations], Mark [Carrano] wants to see you.' And I'm like 'ah yeah, whatever. I'll get there when I get there.'"

"But this time they're like 'Hey, Dr. Amann, the medical staff want to see you.' So I knew something was up," he continued. "But I still in my head didn't truly believe it. It was just like, 'Ah, something weird. You'll be fine. Blah blah blah.' But when I got there, I could tell. The whole crew was in there. They broke the news that my white blood cell count was obviously elevated. We could point fingers in certain directions, but with my history they kinda already knew what was going on."

Reigns made his in-ring return at Fastlane, reuniting The Shield to beat Baron Corbin, Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley.

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