Roman Reigns on Fans Embracing Him After Return From Cancer Fight, Hell in a Cell Finish

– Roman Reigns spoke with Uproxx for a new interview promoting WWE 2K20 and discussing his return following his battle with leukemia and more. Highlights are below:

On 2K partnering with the Leukemia And Lymphoma Society: “I just think it’s awesome. You know what I mean? If you’re in a position to help, I just don’t see why not. I was literally just talking to Ric Flair about it. The miles and the money mean nothing if you don’t have that fulfillment. And my work with LLS, just being able to connect with these, these little heroes and warriors, it is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever been a part of. You can only get those types of smiles from your children or your loved ones, like your wife or your, your girlfriend, that type of love. And to be able to help people out and support them as they’re going through a rough patch it just means a lot to me because it came to me tenfold the support, it felt like a global support. So I mean, for me to be able to take that and just relax and heal, I feel like it is more than my obligation to continue that and pay it forward and help those that are … and find themselves in a similar place that I was.”

On the change in reaction to him from fans since he returned: “Yeah, it was just one of those things that … I don’t know. I’ve never told the crowd how to react. That’s not my job. My job is to go perform and their job is to react accordingly. But there was always a reaction and it was quite, very loud reaction. So I never complained, like I never went through it and was like, “Man, I hate going out there to these really loud reactions.” No, it was excellent. It was just the fact that I couldn’t go out. That was the big problem. It wasn’t necessarily if it was boos, polarizing reaction or cheers. It was just the fact of not being out there that bothered me and I think bothered a lot of our fan base because they do … they recognize the work ethic. They recognize the schedule and the grind and they recognize the production. So I think over the past six, seven, eight years, my work speaks for itself and hopefully I can stay healthy enough to continue that work because as much as I love to help people, it starts in that ring. To be able to take advantage of this platform, I need to be able to wrestle and to continue to create awareness, it starts here in the WWE for me, so hopefully I can just stay healthy and continue to do my thing.”

On being on the cover of WWE 2K20 with Becky Lynch: “It’s awesome … it’s just been phenomenal to, to share the spotlight with her and to be able to see her just come up. When I was out there were a handful of talent that really stepped up, but she led the way. Just to be able to see that and know that that’s what I had supporting me and allowing me to go home and allowing me to heal. I honestly feel almost a little greedy being on it with her. She had such a great year that I really think that we can just celebrate her individually. But it’s just such a great honor to be able to share the cover with her, to be in that light with her as one of the top talent for this company. And hopefully it’ll be a great gaming experience and just a good year overall for everybody.”

On coming to Seth Rollins’ defense over Hell in a Cell’s finish: “It was a situation obviously where the fans weren’t happy and of course we’re going to listen to them and then we want to hear what they got to say and their opinion of it, obviously because that’s who we cater to as our fans. So you never want that. But it’s just tough. I feel for those guys because when you go out there and you bust your ass and you put it all on the line, when you allow another man to swing toolboxes and all this X, Y, Z at your head … And then you find your place out of the love for the theme character disrespecting both of the men. So yeah, I think you’ve got to really find that balance to where you can really pay the, the love and support towards the one character that you’re with without disrespecting both. Because at the end of the day, all those people who are really behind Bray Wyatt that night, they took a big dump all over everybody. I think there can, there can be some respect. By us going out there and doing our thing and busting our ass every single week, there’s a level of respect that we always keep for the fans. And hopefully that respect can be returned.”