The universal champion says he's still feeling effects of the disease weeks after testing positive.
WWE universal champion, Roman Reigns, was a guest on the latest episode of the SI Media Podcast and opened up about several topics including his upcoming Royal Rumble match against Seth Rollins, his relationship with Jon Moxley and what he has gone through since testing positive for COVID-19 in late December.
Reigns, who has been diagnosed with leukemia twice, said he is still dealing with the effects COVID-19.
“For me, obviously in comparison to some of the worst scenarios that are out there and that we’ve seen through the pandemic, it wasn’t bad,” Reigns revealed on the podcast. “For me, it was mainly a pretty good sinus infection, a bronchitis cough, a lot of chest tightness.
“I still feel that actually. When I’m doing my conditioning because we don’t wrestle quite as much and we’re doing a lot of six-man [tag team matches], I don’t have singles matches as much as I used to, so I have to continue to really push the conditioning on my own and I’ve noticed in the past couple of weeks that when I really blow myself up on the bike or running, or whatever I’m doing, I can feel that tightness and a little bit of wheezing.
“So it’s definitely something serious. As someone who is vaccinated and boosted, it still got to me and I still felt the effects. While they weren’t as severe as they can be for some, it did hang around and linger for a while.
“It took me, obviously, I missed [the] Day One [pay-per-view on Jan. 1] and I tested positive a week before that. We were just chasing that negative test and finally a few days before SmackDown the following week, I finally got that negative test and the wife let me back in. So it was a good week that week.”
Reigns was recently part of a noteworthy segment on SmackDown when Rollins mentioned their former Shield partner, Jon Moxley, who currently wrestles in AEW. How did Reigns feel about Rollins dropping Moxley’s name?
“I never shy away from my history,” Reigns says. “Those two are my brothers. Mox, Seth, we’ve done, achieved, gone through the highs and lows, ebbs and flows of it all. So that’ll never change. I’ll always have a deep love and respect for both of those guys. Mox, me and him were super tight, within the Shield and maybe even a little bit closer. They may have been super bonded through wrestling and what they had done at FCW wrestling and prior to WWE, but when it comes to whether we were wrestlers or not, me and Mox, we’re friends.”
Other topics covered with Reigns during his interview on the SI Media Podcast include his suit and sneaker collections, how he feels about his 49ers being in the NFC title game, why he loves working with his family, his Royal Rumble memories as a kid and how hard he would fight Vince McMahon if he was asked to drop the title
You can listen to the podcast above or download it on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.