Backstage news on Reigns’ leukemia announcement; what happened during and after, how it played out

Wade Keller at PWTorch reports almost nobody in the company was aware of Roman Reigns’ situation before he opened Raw last night and made one of the most shocking, emotional announcements in WWE history. His colleagues, including fellow wrestlers, writers, nor announcers knew about Reigns’ battle with leukemia and were not tipped off prior. His closest circle of inner friends may have been the only ones to know anything.

 


 

When Reigns was making the announcement everyone backstage just stopped what they were doing. Nobody was told to pay attention or gather for a big announcement before hearing the sound from the ring.

Raw announcer Corey Graves and Reigns were known to be close friends for years and he showed no signs of “something being up” or “about to happen” when the announcers made their usual entrances to theme music. After Reigns had finished his announcement, the announcers were unsurprisingly teared or outright crying.

As people will have seen from the backstage video of Reigns’ being greeted by wrestlers, he was putting on a brave face and “seems very confident he’ll beat this” according to one colleague.

It will come as no surprise to many that Reigns is very well-liked backstage and there were suspicions something was going on when he missed weekend house shows without explanation. It is now likely that he was deciding how to handle a very recent diagnosis of the cancer returning.

Again, we wish Joe/Roman all the best and pray that he beats this.

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