Roman Reigns speaks candidly of his career low-point.
Roman Reigns has, for the most part, been a top guy for the entirety of his WWE career since debuting as a member of The Shield alongside Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose at WWE Survivor Series 2012.
However, "The Big Dog" Roman Reigns who was on top of WWE from 2015-2019 is night and day from "The Tribal Chief" who has dominated WWE since returning to the company in 2020 amid the global pandemic.
During his A&E Biography special, Reigns referred to the time in 2019 after he'd returned from stepping away due to leukemia as the most miserable time in his career. Roman says he was trying to make everything easy but ultimately things didn't work and the pandemic arrived for him to take a chance to walk away
"I think that was the most miserable time of my career. This is the time that I was just trying to make everything easy. 'I'm paid well. I should make the job easy for everybody. That's what being a top guy is, right?' That's what I translated as being a top guy and it just didn't work. So I left once the pandemic hit. That's where it all changed," he said. "So, at that point, it was so early on in the pandemic. We didn't have any protocols set up. It was still very unknown. So I made the choice to just go home and I told them, 'Until We can figure out how to make it safe. I'm not putting me or my family at risk.'
"I was ready to retire and once I fully removed myself by choice, not due to circumstances, that's when I was able to be truthful with myself. That's when I could really take an authentic genuine eye and look at what I've been doing and look at what I've done. That's when I knew I just wasn't happy with it. I still felt like I didn't achieve what I had set out to do. I didn't reach my potential, I was still under that ceiling, and it was time to break it."
Roman didn't just break the ceiling, he shattered it. He has been the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion for over 1,300 days and he is going to headline the fourth WrestleMania Sunday, in his fifth WrestleMania match, since retaining the title.
Fightful will have live coverage of WWE WrestleMania XL on Sunday, April 7, 2024.
