Braun Strowman thought his career was over after a spinal injury.
The Monster Among Men recently returned to WWE for the first time since August. He hadn’t wrestled since May last year, and had fears that his career could be coming to an abrupt end.
Braun Strowman spoke with Chris Van Vliet about is injury issues. He stated that he was “terrified” of what happened, and thought his career could be over in that moment.
“I didn’t know I had stenosis of the spine. It’s basically where there’s a tightening around your spinal column. So I only had nine millimeters of clearance around my spine between my C4 and C5 vertebrae. I didn’t know that, and I got hit wrong during a match. My head went back, and it pinched my spine. it felt like lightning bolts shot out of both my arms. My arms went limp, so if you watch the match back, you can see the point where it happened.”
“There’s a point where you see my arms drop to my side, and I kind of look around really weird, and finally, my hands and stuff start to move again. I’m looking at my hands, and I go to take off running, and I’m all wobbly, my balance is off, and things like that. We got the match finished, and I got in the back, and it felt like someone was pouring boiling hot water down both of my arms. It was on fire. So I was in this really terrifying place for a couple of weeks, not knowing, am I ever going to have a normal life again? Am I going to be able to do what I love? Am I going to be able to do anything?”
Steve Austin and Triple H Helped Braun Strowman Through His Injury
Braun Strowman continued, revealing that “Stone Cold” Steve Austin gave him reassurance about his injury recovery. Austin suffered similar neck injuries in his career, including having it broken in a match with Owen Hart at Summerslam 1997.
“It’s very fortunate that I’ve become friends with so many of the Legends and things like that in this business. So I called Stone Cold because I knew Stone Cold went through something like this. Come to find out, his injury was almost exactly like mine. It was just a little bit more severe. So he had to know his spine when he got piledrived, and it pinched his spine. It pushed all the fluid out of his spine and bruised. He was actually paralyzed from the neck down for like 30 seconds. So having him talk to me and kind of almost giving me the proverbial ‘it’s going to be okay’ was a very big breath of fresh air because, like I said, I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Then WWE takes unbelievable care of their talent. Talking with Triple H and stuff like that, and him going, ‘Look, what we’re doing right now is not as important as what you’re going to be doing in 15 years of your life. Get it taken care of. You’re important. You’re not going anywhere. If you can wrestle again, you can. If you can’t, we’ll figure it out, but we’re going to go.’ Having that pat on the back, again, giving that reassurance because you know you’re not guaranteed anything. So having them be able to put me in the place to have the best surgery that I can, going to the WWE Performance Center. Having the best rehabilitation that I can. I can’t be more thankful.”
