In honor of National Blood Cancer Awareness Month, Stacy Sager, President of the SagerStrong Foundation, had the honor of sitting down and speaking with WWE Universal Champion — Joe Anoa’i (aka -“Roman Reigns”) to talk with him about how he stayed tough in the face of cancer and fought through his second bout / CML diagnosis and treatment in 2019.

Before becoming a WWE Superstar, Joe Anoa’i was a college student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, where he was a rising football star with big plans to make it in the NFL. This is where our conversation begins.

Stacy: Take us back to your first cancer diagnosis – what were your signs and symptoms — how did you know something was wrong?
Joe: This was right in the process of me entering the NFL draft and hoping to be picked up by a team and I was just finishing up at Georgia Tech. I was 21 and just a young man. The only thing I had ever dreamed of was football and playing in the NFL. Since I was seven years old; that was the goal — to be somewhat of a sports star, but to be in the NFL. I did not get drafted, but I did sign a free-agent deal with the Minnesota Vikings and just to kind of put it in a nutshell, athletics from the beginning, has always kind of saved my life. Having that opportunity to go to rookie camp up in Minneapolis before you go in to practice or you sign your contract, you have to go through a full physical and it’s the NFL, so they put you through a very detailed physical and also bloodwork. That is the portion, which saved my life being that it is leukemia and blood cancer, just getting that CBC was the first detailed hint that something was going on with me. We did that all the morning before practice — went to meetings, went about the day, went to practice, and had a really good practice, which is kind of irrelevant, but that’s one of the little details I hold on to. I had a really good practice that day.

So, we’re following up at meetings and watching films of that practice and as soon as I walk out of the meeting room, two of the trainers are there to pull me off to the side to tell me that there is going on with my blood work and they needed to take me back to the clinic to do a second round to make sure it wasn’t a false reading or make sure nothing serious was going on. We went back and did the blood work and the results were pretty much the same. I had 70,000 white blood cells and at the time that did not mean anything to me — I had no clue what was going on. Like I said, I was tunnel vision on being part of the NFL and being a part of that Vikings team. And from there, the team made contacts for me, to get me home and to get to me an oncologist. And from that moment on, I relied on my mom and my family to guide me through it. Looking back at it now I was just in shock; being so young and not any true adversity at that point in my life and everything kind of went smoothly for me. I was a young athlete. I did well in school. I was fairly popular and I had a lot of friends in high school, so I had nothing “punch me in the mouth” so to speak, like

that, so this was something that really put me on my butt. It’s funny because, with my wrestling career, we started out as a group called “The Shield” and we wear tactical vests, it’s like a SWAT team looking mentality, and a lot of times they have those hooks on the back to where if something happens your teammate can kind of drag you through. At that time my Mom was my teammate, she kind of grabbed me by that strap and dragged me through the process and made sure everything was ok, because I don’t think I was truly prepared at that point to soak it in and absorb it.

The fact that it took Reigns only 127 days from the time of his cancer announcement to his return to the ring is a miracle. When Reigns was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 22, the symptoms were foreign, but this time he was aware that the red flags were there, and they were hard to ignore. According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, leukemia begins in a cell in the bone marrow and, over time, the infected cells can suppress the production of normal cells. A healthy adult should have a white blood cell count of between 4,000 and 11,000. In Roman’s case, a white blood cell count well over 100,000 caused alarm. Through further examination, doctors discovered an enlarged spleen and knew exactly what was happening.

Stacy: What was it like getting back into the ring after your second diagnosis and sharing the news with your fans?
Joe: I have to start out by saying, we men are stubborn beasts and can be hardheaded animals. It was nerve wracking to be honest, to be able to share that information, as you know very well, with the world especially now a days, with the connectivity of social media and just how potent the internet can be in a very good and bad way sometimes, especially with the wrestling community and sports entertainment; fans are very passionate and very vocal about what’s good and bad. So, my main thing was to disarm them and to make them aware that this was not storyline. This was not entertainment, this was not WWE, this was not a role, and to introduce them to Joe Anoa’i for the first time. That was very scary at the time, but as soon as two, three, four, maybe five minutes in, to be able to see those faces live and to see those people in the crowd. It is tough because they are there for an entertainment show; they are there to escape and to enjoy themselves and I am dropping this bomb on them so to speak. But, for them not to react in a harsh way, to be so gentle with me, to allow me to share what was going on with me, not the character, but the man behind the character, and let them know about my struggle and the situation, that island that you were talking about, that isolation is very real. Twenty minutes before I went out there, I felt like I was on an island all by myself, even with my co-workers surrounding me and giving me love and support. They were still going to be able to do their job tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, but my future was uncertain. I did not know what I was going to do, I knew that I was going to get on a plane and go back home and I would figure it out from there. But, as soon as I felt that love from the crowd and the support it literally felt like a security blanket wrapped around me all in that one moment. I knew that it was going to be a different story this time around and from there it was like a snow effect, the momentum just really set in because especially for me and my character, I can be a bit polarizing where the crowd can go back and forth with me and we can experience a bunch of different emotions while I’m out there in the arena. Once I got back and was able to check out some of the social media, whether it was Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, I was really able to feel that love and support from not only the just the 10,000 or so people in the arena, but everybody around the whole, the whole WWE universe and then it really felt like it stretched out even further than WWE and sports entertainment. It felt like people from all walks of life, all different forms of entertainment – just people who had no clue who I was still sending me best wishes and get well soon wishes and the support that I needed to heal. Read more