In October 2018, Roman Reigns relinquished the WWE Universal Title and announced his leukemia had returned after 11 years.
Reigns left WWE for four months, returning in February to announce he was in remission. Reigns stepped away from WWE once again this past March, stepping away during the pandemic to be with his family instead of showing up to television each week.
Appearing on After The Bell, Reigns discussed what it was like to miss WrestleMania and how that related to having to miss time for leukemia treatment.
"It sucked," Reigns said about missing WrestleMania and having to watch it at home. "It was a two-night event, I imagine I would've closed one of those nights. I'm a four-star general and have main evented four WrestleManias. In my head, the fifth star was coming. It would have been merchandised. To not be involved...even the year before, to get healthy again and pretty much rush back, I could have taken a lot more time for myself, but that's apart of the sacrifice and part of being at the top. You're constantly thinking about everybody else and your contributions to the business and the company and to keeping up to where it needs to be. That responsibility you're given and you take when you wear those shoes as the face of WWE. There are only a few guys who understand that mindset and are willing to put everything on the line. Before I left for leukemia, I would have kept going. If it wasn't for my spleen being enlarged and legitimately being endangered for me to have physical contact, I would have tried to keep wrestling if I could have. If it was physically possible for me to go through my treatments and still wrestle, I probably would have, I would have entertained it."
Reigns has reclaimed his position at the top of the card since returning to WWE at SummerSlam, capturing the Universal Title a week later at Payback.
He is set to defend the title against Jey Uso on Sunday at Clash of Champions.
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