The Usos revived a childhood story about Roman Reigns on Hot Ones Versus, describing a kid who was already waking before dawn to make weight for football. Jimmy Uso said Reigns, then about 8 to 10 years old, would be out at Myrtle Grove ballpark around 6 a.m. wearing two trash bags and running laps before the team arrived for 8:00 in the morning games.
That detail gave the anecdote its punch: Reigns would sweat off the weight, then eat whatever he wanted, put it back on and still dominate the other kids on the field. Jimmy said the team usually showed up about 7:30, with Reigns already working before most of them got there. Jey Uso added that their mother would yell at him to get up, underscoring how different their household was from the version Jimmy described, where Reigns was being babyed while he trained.
The story lands as a family snapshot more than a wrestling anecdote. The Usos and Reigns grew up together in the Anoa’i family, which they described as being raised more like brothers than cousins, and they played football together for years. In that setting, the childhood grind reads as an early sign of the discipline that would later define Reigns in public, even if the moment itself was offered as a joke about an embarrassing memory the OTC would not want repeated.
There is still a sharper edge to the story than the laughs suggest. Jimmy’s version makes Reigns sound relentless at an age when most kids were just getting to the ballpark, and Jey’s comment about their mother’s reaction shows how ordinary family routines sat beside that effort. It is a small glimpse of how the family talked about work, body size and competition long before any of them became stars.
For readers who only know Roman Reigns as a dominant adult performer, the answer is clear: the childhood story is being used to show that the drive was there early, and the family remembers it as part of who he was long before the spotlight.
