Before he became a member of The Shield, was named the “Big Dog” or linked up with Paul Heyman to become the “Tribal Chief” on his way to a record-breaking five consecutive WrestleMania main events, Roman Reigns was Joe Anoa'i, a zero-star recruit out of Pensacola, Florida who became a star defensive linemen at Georgia Tech.

Ballooning up from 240 pounds to 300 during his tenure in the trenches for Brian Cox's team, the future Reigns ultimately went undrafted, but pursued his professional football ambitions despite being a, shall we say, mid-card prospect, signing with the Minnesota Vikings as a UDFA before being forced to take a step back from the sport to deal with his first bout with leukemia. After getting cleared to return to play, Reigns signed with Shad and Tony Khan's Jacksonville Jaguars but failed to make the final 53-man roster and ultimately opted to continue his career in the CFL, where he played a single professional season for the Edmonton Eskimos before retiring to pursue the family business.

Discussing his athletic ambitions in an expansive interview with ESPN, Reigns explained that, while he dreamed of being a football player, his ultimate goal was to inspire the next generation of young athletes one way or another.

“I wanted to have an impact on young men,” Roman Reigns told ESPN. “I wanted to be the way Emmitt Smith and Michael Jordan and Joe Montana and the stars of when I was a child, the way they made me feel. I wanted to make other young athletes feel that way. But no matter what, it was either you're going to be a wrestler, or you're going to be a football player. A superstar of some sort.”

Asked about the transition from football to wrestling, this time in a 2018 interview with The Athletic, Reigns noted that it's more challenging than some fans might think.

“The transition, regardless, is so overwhelming and shocking,” Reigns revealed. “You go from being on a football field decked out in pads, covered up. Next thing you know, you’re putting on underwear, going out in front of not many people, so that’s embarrassing. It’s a huge transition getting comfortable to the situation, getting comfortable with the people around you, with yourself, your own body and self-esteem.”

While there is a tried and true pathway from football to professional wrestling, with everyone from celebrity grapplers like Lawrence Thomas to full-time workers like AJ Francis and Bill Goldberg going from the gridiron to the ring, in the end, Reigns' insight is incredibly interesting, especially since he went from a being a very marginal NFL/CFL player who would have struggled to scrape out a living as a journeyman to the top guy in the top professional wrestling promotion in the world. Even with about as good of a familial lineage as one could ask for, that takes hard work and dedication, especially considering his leukemia diagnosis.

Signing with the Minnesota Vikings helped to save Roman Reigns' life.

Speaking of Roman Reigns' time in the professional football world, the former Georgia Tech defensive tackle revealed in his Paul Heyman-directer A&E Biography that if it wasn't for his decision to sign with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent and having to go through their physicals before rookie camp, he may not have found the Chronic Myeloid Leukemia that caused to miss multiple stints of his professional athletic career.

“So, it was the very first day of rookie camp, we started out and went and did our physicals, which included blood work,” Roman Reigns revealed via Daily Norseman. “As I was walking out, there were two trainers there to pretty much intercept me. So that’s where we went into the rabbit hole to find out the diagnosis of CML (Chronic Myeloid Leukemia)… which is a form of leukemia… which is cancer of the blood.”

Now granted, it's safe to assume that if Reigns signed with darn near any other NFL team, they probably would have found his CML when doing the introductory bloodwork required in a rookie physical. Still, if Reigns opted against pursuing professional football, or took things in another direction, who knows, maybe he wouldn't have found out about the leukemia until much later down the line and it could have impacted his career in football and professional wrestling, robbing fans of two of the greatest factions in WWE history and a record-breaking run that could culminate on Night 2 of WrestleMania 40 at the home of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, Lincoln Financial Field.