Roman Reigns has been reigning over the WWE as the Universal Champion since Payback 2020. However, “The Tribal Chief” recently had to sit out of the Day One premium live event after testing positive for COVID-19.
In a recent appearance on the SI Media podcast with Jimmy Traina, Reigns talked about his experience with COVID-19. He explained that in comparison to some other people’s cases of COVID, his wasn’t as bad, but it did leave him with some symptoms. Primarily, the champion highlighted how he has been dealing with chest tightness.
“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 said. “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.”
Reigns described that despite being vaccinated and boosted, he still felt some of the effects as COVID-19, but is glad that they weren’t as serious as they could have been otherwise. That being said, “The Head of the Table” noted that he was glad to have been able to pass through the week of infection without any complications other than having missed a major pay-per-view.
“So it’s definitely something serious,” Reigns said. “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.”
In recent weeks, Reigns has returned to action and regained his place at the head of the table. He’s set to defend his title against Seth Rollins at WWE Royal Rumble
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