"My real name is Joe, and I've been living with leukemia for 11 years."
October 24, 2018 8:46 AM   Subscribe

This week's episode of WWE Monday Night Raw started like many others, with Universal Champion Roman Reigns walking purposefully to the ring, title belt over his shoulder, microphone in hand, to address the audience. Instead of his regular boasting and selling of the next big pay-per-view event, though, Reigns broke kayfabe, surrendering his championship and announcing that he would be taking a break from the ring to battle leukemia.

This comes at a particularly bad time for Reigns, who had finally reunited with his teammates in the Shield and captured the top championship in WWE, the culmination of nearly five years of storylines woven amongst real-life injuries, on-screen betrayals, and a rabidly divided fanbase. It also comes at a particularly bad time for WWE as it weighs whether to go on with a major show in Saudi Arabia with a main event that was to have featured Reigns and which may have already lost crossover star John Cena.
posted by Etrigan (16 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
lolwut, part of Saudi's strategy to move its economy away from oil was to host the Royal Rumble?
posted by Damienmce at 9:02 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Damienmce, yes, they brought WWE and a big tech conference there. Last Week Tonight segment on it from last week
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:04 AM on October 24, 2018


I managed to hold back the tears during that promo. But when Seth Rollins was barely holding it together during the Shield fistbump, my floodgates opened. And then when Finn Balor came out teary eyed, I changed the channel. As always, fuck cancer.

They haven't mentioned Saudi Arabia as the site of with Crown Jewel for the last 2 weeks of episodes. It makes me wonder if they're going to have a crazy plot to have it there, but green screen/cgi in audience members from a simulcast at Full Sail University and try to have us think they're not there. It's moon-landing-conspiracy adjacent, but this IS Vince McMahon we're talking about. I won't be watching Crown Jewel, just as I didn't watch the Greatest Royal Rumble. GRR was because of the exclusion of women. CJ is exclusion of women PLUS current events.

Although Shawn Michaels is my original wrestling Boo* I have absolutely zero interest in watching him wrestle. Let the younger talent have the spotlight.

*My current wrestling Boo is AJ Styles, for those who follow.
posted by kimberussell at 9:21 AM on October 24, 2018


I know zero about WWE, but I wish this gentleman well and pray for a full recovery.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 9:25 AM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


Cena (possibly) refusing to go to Saudi Arabia is genuinely surprising. I don't want to speculate about reasons, so I don't want to be too happy about it, but it seems like a real-deal move from a guy with pull.

And not to be cynical, but I wonder what kind of health insurance Reigns has, and whether Vince is going to pay for his upcoming treatments. On the one hand, the shitty way McMahon treats WWE's talent, as a group, is well-known, and his resistance to treating them as employees (which they are) is deplorable, but he's also known for being paternalistic and going the extra mile for employees who have been loyal to him.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:32 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


WWE wrestlers and other non-broadcaster talent are not employees, they are independent contractors. They pay for their own healthcare.

Shouldn't be true, but is and has been for decades. Reigns made big bucks - and he's gotta be smart enough to have health care in place knowing this history.

(Again, this should not be the way it is done.)
posted by andreaazure at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2018


He's also focused on Reigns as the latest link in the Hogan/Austin/Johnson/Cena chain, so ensuring he has top-of-the-line medical care might also just be a good business move from McMahon's point of view.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:44 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


WWE wrestlers and other non-broadcaster talent are not employees, they are independent contractors. They pay for their own healthcare.

On the other (very non-exculpatory) hand, WWE will pay for drug rehab for anyone they've ever employed, even years later. Some people are known to have "taken advantage" of this at least five times, and a few people have gotten WWE to pay for it while employed by (or even running) another wrestling company. It's a very weird exception that I don't think anyone's ever fully explained.
posted by Etrigan at 9:55 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Interesting to discover there are mefites who are fans of WWE. Live and learn.
posted by notreally at 9:59 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


On the other (very non-exculpatory) hand, WWE will pay for drug rehab for anyone they've ever employed, even years later. Some people are known to have "taken advantage" of this at least five times, and a few people have gotten WWE to pay for it while employed by (or even running) another wrestling company. It's a very weird exception that I don't think anyone's ever fully explained.

I got the impression that the WWE or someone associated with them was the pipeline to getting those same drugs to the wrestlers as performance enhancers. It’s not surprising that they would pay for rehab in exchange for not blowing the whistle.
posted by dr_dank at 10:09 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Cena (possibly) refusing to go to Saudi Arabia is genuinely surprising. I don't want to speculate about reasons, so I don't want to be too happy about it, but it seems like a real-deal move from a guy with pull.

And canny move if he has an eye on future success of Rock-esque heights.
posted by Damienmce at 11:16 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I have not been a fan of Roman Reigns as a wrestler. As a human being he seems like a great guy, but I have not liked the way that WWE has handled his storylines and how his mic work is micromanaged and how he has not been allowed to use the more expansive move set that I know he is capable of using. I have booed him as hard as I have ever booed anyone to step foot in the ring.

But… Cancer is the ultimate heel. Cancer killed my father. Cancer killed my grandfather. Cancer has killed people that I love, and people that are loved by people that I love, and people that are loved by people that are loved by people that I love, branching out beyond counting or comprehension. It is entirely plausible that cancer will one day kill me. Anyone who fights cancer gets immediate babyface status in my book, and I will cheer them as loud and as long as my lungs will permit.

Get well soon, Joe.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:09 PM on October 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


I don’t know what to write, and the reality is that I don’t have to write anything. All I can do is keep Joe in my heart, whether I liked his wrestling character or made fun of his dumb wrestling character stuff or not, and know I’ll see him and get frustrated about him sooner rather than later. This may be, without hyperbole, one of the most unforgettable and important moments WWE’s ever going to have on their show. The reaction when Roman announces he’s kicked cancer’s ass again and is coming for whoever’s Universal Champion again — hopefully not Brock Lesnar, but it’s fine if it is — will be deafening. And it should be.

It’s not goodbye. It’s just “how many Royal Rumbles until Roman returns unexpectedly and wins, and we’ve all got tears in our eyes.” See you some wonderful January, Roman.


From Brandon Stroud's breakdown of Raw. Like a lot of his writing, it's pretty powerful, and his attempt to explain how Dean Ambrose's heel turn works so perfectly in this moment is amazing, and one of those moments where you hope that the WWE writers will live up to the potential of the story they could tell, all the while knowing that history says anything that pure and obvious is just utterly and completely beyond them. Dean vs. Seth in the absence of Joe should make the Gargano/Ciampa blood feud in NXT look like a pre-school squabble over who gets to play with the red truck, and, at least until they blow their chance to do something epic with this, I'm going to keep Stroud's version of this alive in my head.

But, aside from that, I do dearly hope the best for Joe/Roman. By all accounts, he is a wonderful human being, and even if he wasn't, no one should have to deal with this. I wish him a speedy recovery, and yeah, I look forward to hearing his music hit as the clock hits zero in the Royal Rumble. It's going to be such a perfect moment, and yeah, I'm choosing to believe that, rather than any of the other possible outcomes.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:45 PM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Interesting to discover there are mefites who are fans of WWE. Live and learn.

Oh, you'd be surprised at the depths of wrestling knowledge around here, and the variety of what exists and is called wrestling around the world. I have watched six men wrestle a stepladder... that came in as champion and left as champion. One of my favorite wrestlers is inflatable. I have seen a match between the Ninja Turtles and the Ninja Turtles interrupted by a third set of Ninja Turtles. I have watched a man wrestle a walking tree, a table wrestle a ladder, and a hot tag made to a mannequin head. But those are links for another time so as not to hijack the thread.

Parasite Unseen nailed it:
I have not been a fan of Roman Reigns as a wrestler. As a human being he seems like a great guy

Roman Reigns has been one of the most sincerely hated figures in recent years of the WWE. And to reinforce the above, it is not because he is a bad person; it is because he is booked badly and put into situations that endear him to no one other than small children. Not only is he Vince's Chosen One, he is written to consistently be The Guy in the WWE despite the loud objections of much of the fanbase. Many who boo Roman are not booing him specifically as much as they boo the repetition whenever he is involved. People have doctored the "THEN - NOW - FOREVER" opening to WWE shows to read "ROMAN - WINS - FOREVER" and such.

But despite the fabled stereotypes of wrasslin' fans, we do get it. Many a hated grappler has become a fan favorite rapidly after giving fans new reasons to like him or her. We want a good story and fun characters and not all of them have to be squeaky-clean. Give us an entertaining ride and we will generally go wherever it takes us. And once it became clear that Roman was speaking from the heart as Joe Anoi'a, those boos went SILENT Monday night.

Get well soon, Joe. Beat cancer into the dirt. And, for God's sake, do something fun and different when you get back.

Also, to steal an anecdote from a poster on another forum:
I've mentioned my daughter on here a few times because she had cancer and got to meet Bayley.

Well, in June, Bayley invited us to the MSG house show and took us backstage to meet a few of the superstars. We met Ronda and Matt Hardy and Seth and a few others. But before we left, Roman walked into the catering area that we were in. Sam mainly likes Bayley and doesnt recognize lots of the wrestlers but she knew him.

So he came over and Bayley introduced Sam, he told her how proud he was that she had beaten cancer, and in a moment I didn't think of until yesterday, mentioned how he had to fight something like her before he started wrestling.


This is no angle. This is real life. And this is a guy who'll finally deserve that heartfelt ovation.
posted by delfin at 3:32 PM on October 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


Delfin, thank you for making me realize that there has never been an FPP about the Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship. Gonna file that away for an idle evening or weekend.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:04 AM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Especially since there is a nonzero chance of said FPP actually winning the Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship if the right people heard about it.
posted by delfin at 12:02 PM on October 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


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