If you’re a big WWE fan (or even a casual fan) then you already know that the last time Finn Balor wrestled, he won the Universal Championship against Seth Rollins – only to have to vacate it the next night due to a broken shoulder suffered in the actual match.
While truly a devastating chain of events – apparently, it wasn’t Balor’s worst injury.
At a recent panel in Wizard World, we were able to get Finn Balor’s thoughts on his most brutal career injury – and it’s definitely an interesting story from when he wrestled in New Japan before WWE:
I got a kick in the shin and I remember after the match going “Damn. Did I get kicked in the shin?” and I couldn’t remember. Things happen in a match and the shin was sore. I went to bed woke up the next and shin was worse.
I showed it to the doctor and he said it was just a bad bang. Went to the trainer’s room, taped it all up. The trainer actually taped it up. The doctor saw it and the trainer saw it. Came back after the match and the masseuse was taking the tape off and I go “Man. This doesn’t feel normal. It’s really sore.” He just said “Nah, its nothing, just a kick. You’ll be fine tomorrow.”I wake up the next day and I’m at the dojo and put my feet out of the bed and couldn’t put them on the floor. I think man this is some weird kick aftereffect I’m getting. Strong stuff.
So I’m downstairs in the Dojo and Fale [Simitaitoko] walks in and I’m in shorts thinking “Man. My shin. What the hell has happened to my shin?” and Fale goes “Oh man. You need to go to the hospital right away. I had that exact same thing in Mexico.”
He’s one of the very few people who spoke English in New Japan at the time, so he talks to one of the young Japanese boys and told them to take me to the hospital. There’s’ communication going on between the young boy and all these doctors and then this doctor is someone from somewhere that can speak English and he says:
“Okay this is what has happened. You’ve got a very serious infection in your leg. It’s eating into your bone. If you had waited one more day we would have had to amputate your leg.”
So I get checked into the hospital, I end up staying there for 10 days. This was before iPhones and before Skype, so I couldn’t even get in touch with my family. It was really a weird time. People kind of go ‘oh you just got injured’ when really I was fighting in the hospital to save my leg. That was probably the worst injury but at the same time, it wasn’t a lot to deal with because I got better in 10 days and was back wrestling in a couple weeks. That was a really crazy injury.
All things considered, it injury at this year’s SummerSlam sounds pretty minor compared to this one.
Some were speculating that the wrestler would make a return at WWE Roadblock in December, but he confirmed that that isn’t the case:
“So I believe a lot of rumors went around this week about Finn Balor possibly returning at Roadblock, I think that was literally just a mistake that had been submitted before Summerslam, and that was the projected card, and it hasn’t been updated yet, so that was probably just an advertisement that slipped through the cracks. I can 100% guarantee – what date is Roadblock? December 18th? I will 100% guarantee that I will be home with my family and friends at Christmas. I will be back in 2017.”
So there you have it, Balor fans. He’ll be back in 2017.