The latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has a major story covering Reigns’ condition and the atmosphere behind-the-scenes at WWE Raw before, during and after the announcement that his Leukemia had returned.
According to the Observer’s report, Vince McMahon was made aware of the situation on Oct. 18th, four days before the announcement was made on Raw.
A very small selection of key officials were made aware the following day, in order to start preparing for the major creative decisions that had to be made. That list reportedly includes Paul Levesque (Triple H), Kevin Dunn, Mark Carrano as well as Dave Kapoor and Ed Koskey in creative.
Outside of the key players in-the-know, nobody was told what was going on or even why the Universal Champion was removed from last weekend’s live events.
On Monday, Reigns stayed on a private bus throughout the day. A few talents were told that “there was an issue” but weren’t given specifics, other than that Roman would be addressing it himself at the start of the show. Some knew he would be dropping the title, but not many.
Even Roman’s own partners and traveling companions, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, were kept out of the loop. They were told to to meet him on the entrance ramp after his announcement, but the reactions seen on television as well as the backstage video WWE posted from Gorilla position (below) were the legitimate reactions from talent minutes after they found out.
Wrestling Observer Newsletter