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Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

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Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby Messiah » Oct 22, '18, 6:25 pm

Wow.

https://www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/2018/ ... ia-wwe-raw

Roman Reigns opened this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw wearing casual clothing, the Universal championship over his shoulder. With reports going around that he was injured, it seemed he may be coming out to confirm as much.

Instead, he dropped a bombshell, announcing that for the past 11 years he’s been living with leukemia and it’s back. Because of that, he is relinquishing the Universal championship, going home, and focusing on his health.

“I will beat this, I will be back, and you will see me very, very soon,” he said.


Prayers up for Reigns.

This just completely changed the landscape of the WWE. I mean regardless of how you feel about his character, he's been the top guy for a long time now.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby DBSoT » Oct 22, '18, 7:53 pm

Absolutely gutting. Cancer sucks so bad and can bring down anyone. Seth's crying got me too.

P.S. It takes a special kind of asshole to say "What" after Roman announced his cancer.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby KaiserGlider » Oct 22, '18, 9:49 pm

This is obviously terrible for him personally. But I think the product could use a break from Roman Reigns for a while. Him and Brock have been dominating the Raw main event scene for what seems like a decade at this point. Roman just cut his flat-out best babyface promo, and at the same time it's a sad fact that this is the one thing that has finally made everyone rally behind him as a babyface. If he ends up going over leukemia and coming back in a couple months, it could be a good thing for his career in the long term.

Main event for Crown Jewel is now Strowman vs Lesnar for the vacated title. If you're gonna be praying for Reigns, pray that Lesnar doesn't get the belt back too. Hopefully this time around they're not gonna fuck up Brock vs Braun. It sucks that they turned Strowman heel. He's not walking into this match with the momentum he had a few months ago.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby AkydefGoldberg » Oct 23, '18, 6:34 am

Awful news and wish him the best and hope he has a full recovery.

I saw an excerpt of his statement and thought it was nice he referenced his real name and that behind all the Roman Reigns bravado, there's a bloke with a normal name trying to do his job regardless of whether you agree or disagree with how, why, when his character has been developed and progressed.

If he came back, it could be a new, more authentic beginning yet I also wonder how long it would be before a heel uses his real-life illness to make a jibe..

But all the best to him and his family.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby PorkChop » Oct 23, '18, 10:20 am

AkydefGoldberg wrote:If he came back, it could be a new, more authentic beginning yet I also wonder how long it would be before a heel uses his real-life illness to make a jibe..

I wouldn't be surprised, although I imagine cancer is given a special exemption by WWE due to their work with Susan G Komen. They're cool with making jokes about people's suicides though.

I wish Reigns nothing but the best. I'm sure he'll be back.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby Hanley! » Oct 23, '18, 12:09 pm

That fucking sucks. Hope the guy gets through it. Nobody should have to go through a second round with cancer at 33 years old. Fans can become numb to death in wrestling, with loads of wrestlers dying young from drug overdoses or pushing their bodies too hard. But this announcement really upset me.

It'll change the landscape of WWE for sure, but not for the better. He's been the focal point for everyone's issues with WWE for the last four years, and has had to take the lion's share of the abuse. But with Reigns gone people are quickly going to realise that it's just a bad product. None of the company's issues had anything to do with him. He was being used badly, but everyone else is used badly too and that's not going to change.

Hope he makes a full recovery and comes back to the biggest pop of his career. Dude deserves it.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby VaderBomb » Oct 23, '18, 4:20 pm

Poor guy. I hope that he pushes through.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby KaiserGlider » Oct 23, '18, 11:28 pm

Hanley! wrote:It'll change the landscape of WWE for sure, but not for the better. He's been the focal point for everyone's issues with WWE for the last four years, and has had to take the lion's share of the abuse. But with Reigns gone people are quickly going to realise that it's just a bad product. None of the company's issues had anything to do with him. He was being used badly, but everyone else is used badly too and that's not going to change.


You cannot separate him from the company's problems so easily. There's a reason he's been the poster boy for people venting their negativity at the company for the last four years, and that's because he's been the poster boy of the company for the last four years. They've been putting all their eggs into the Roman Reigns basket while cooling off pushes of hot babyfaces like Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman. They've had everybody from The Rock to The Undertaker to John Cena to Triple H go out of their way to put him over. They've had to invent all sorts of ways to get him cheered or prevent some of his matches from being shat on. The last 4 Wrestlemanias have been main evented by Roman Reigns, and 3 out of those 4 main events were not received well. So many resources used for getting one guy over could have been diverted elsewhere.

People know that most of that is not directly HIS fault as a person or as a performer. People know that Joe is a good performer, and has always done his best with the material that he is given (and that the material usually sucks). At the same time though, the fact is that Roman Reigns the WWE superstar has been put on a pedestal above almost everyone else because he's been designated "the face of the company". And him being in that pedestal has had a massive impact on WWE's main event scene for years. Either Roman is defending the title, or it's a foregone conclusion that whoever is currently holding the title will drop it to Roman. The whole Lesnar title reign just transitioned more focus on Roman. Even when he's not in the title scene, Roman main events. As bad as the booking has been, if other people had gotten world title runs and Wrestlemania main events, things wouldn't have felt so stagnant for so long.

Yes, you could argue that almost everyone is used badly, but nobody else since Cena has gotten the push Roman has. No other performer has defined the WWE product for the last four years as much as Roman Reigns has. If he was just another guy whose absence wouldn't make any difference, then why is everybody saying that his absence is going to change the landscape of the company?

He would have almost certainly main evented the next Wrestlemania too, but now there's a good chance that's not going to happen. Maybe someone else will get a chance now, and I for one want to know who it will be. If it was up to me, Reigns would still be around and he would have been a heel since beating The Undertaker. But seeing the way things were going with his babyafce title reign that would have probably continued till Wrestlemania, I find it hard to not be interested in the prospect of something new. And I find it odd that all those people who were so tired of the guy seemed to have completely changed their tune on him as a character within the past day.
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Re: Roman Reigns has Leukemia, relinquishes title

Postby Hanley! » Oct 24, '18, 3:00 am

KaiserGlider wrote:Yes, you could argue that almost everyone is used badly, but nobody else since Cena has gotten the push Roman has.


Right. And Cena was also hated. There's no reason to think that the next guy will be any different.

Reigns is a better performer than Cena, but was the more hated of the two. Because the WWE's booking is getting worse over time and the fans patience for it is running thinner. As a character Reigns was more phony, more corporate, and more branded than Cena. And he was pushed down people's throats even harder. The next chosen guy will be treated the same, and it'll keep getting worse over time.

The company is horrible at booking faces. This has been an issue since Eddie Guerrero passed. And it's always worst when it comes to the top face in the company, who gets more television time and is naturally under more scrutiny.

If Reigns doesn't make a quick recovery, my guess is that they're going to go with Braun or Drew as their replacement top guy. Braun is quite a limited, one dimensional performer, who is already starting to feel a little over-branded. Nobody knows yet how Drew would be treated as a top babyface, but I can't see his booking being any better. They will continue to get this wrong, because they've been getting almost everything wrong for the last few years. Vince McMahon just isn't a competent storyteller these days.

The biggest problem with the Reigns push is that WWE showed that they are unwilling to give the fans what they want. I think that's what people reacted to most. It wasn't so much that they thought Reigns sucked as the top guy, it was more that they were angry that they had told WWE they wanted someone else and the company ignored them. First it was Bryan, then it was Styles, then it was Seth. But Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn are still those same stubborn bastards. Now that Reigns is gone, they're not going to look at the roster and see who the most popular guy is and push him to the moon. That's not how they work. They're going to find a guy that they like, and strap a rocket to his back, and push him their way.

Reigns the performer wasn't the problem, it was the people writing for him. Those writers haven't gone away.
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