Former WWE Universal Champion Finn Balor spoke with GQ to promote Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view event in Toronto, Ontario at the Scotiabank Arena.
At this show, Balor, who is reportedly taking time off from WWE after this show for a month or two, is slated to wrestle Bray Wyatt in a singles match.
During this interview, he was asked if there anything he does in the weeks leading up from a training or diet perspective to better prepare himself physically.
“No, I’m a creature of habit. I find that I’ve gotten to where I am based on my skill and my ability. I won’t change my style or my training or my diet if I’m fighting Bray Wyatt or Brock Lesnar or Seth Rollins or Braun Strowman. It doesn’t really affect me. I’m comfortable in my body, I’m comfortable with my training, and I have confidence in myself as a performer in the moment, so I shouldn’t have to adapt my training to help counter other people’s strengths and weaknesses. I should rely on my strengths.”
Balor’s time as Universal Champion was cut short after becoming the inaugural champion once beating Seth Rollins at the 2016 SummerSlam event.
He tore his labrum in his right shoulder during the middle of the match. It turns out that he was dealing with a bad left shoulder for the majority of his career.
“A little known fact: I’ve been dogged by a left rotator cuff injury since I was 19. I’ve been coping with that my whole career. And then, of course, I completely destroyed the right shoulder. So pretty ironic that the shoulder that’s been bugging me my whole career has now become the stronger shoulder. But I got to do my rehab with Kevin Wilk in Birmingham, Alabama, and he taught me a lot about stabilization and different methods of fatiguing the joint without having to lift overhead. So I won’t ever do any overhead presses anymore. Everything will be nice and narrow. Really, it taught me how to train a lot smarter. I think, honestly, it’s improved my physique in the last three years as a result of the accessory work and paying more attention to the details, as opposed to just going to that one-rep max bench press or big overhead press. Sometimes bringing it back to basics and working on the baby stuff is what’s important.”
