Finn Balor has revealed that he came close to missing WrestleMania 39 after suffering a torn calf just three weeks before the event, forcing him into a race against time to face Edge inside Hell in a Cell.
The Demon returned for the blockbuster clash with Edge in Los Angeles, looking to bring their rivalry to an end. The match later became infamous after Balor suffered a gruesome head wound, but he has now revealed that an entirely different injury nearly kept him off the card altogether.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Balor recalled being in a six-man tag match in the lead-up to the show. Midway through the match, the WWE star suffered a calf tear:
“So three weeks before WrestleMania 39 I get asked to do an impromptu, I’m a Raw performer, but they say, ‘Hey, can you come to SmackDown and do a match on SmackDown? It’s like a six man tag or something. I remember I grabbed Cruz Del Toro in a front face lock, and I stepped backwards to tag Damian, and as I stepped backwards, I tore my calf. At first I thought like Cruz was messing with me and slapping me in the back of the leg, and then I looked down and his arms were around my waist. I’m like, oh no, this is bad.”
Balor initially thought Cruz Del Toro had slapped him in the leg before realising he had suffered a serious injury. Despite the pain, he finished the match while already wondering whether there was enough time to recover before WrestleMania.
The WWE star admitted finishing the match likely worsened the injury and revealed he spent the next three weeks using a mobility scooter backstage:
“I finished the match, and I probably made it worse by finishing the match… People don’t know I was on one of those little scooters for three weeks.”
Balor explained that WWE carefully shot his Raw promo with Edge to hide the injury before he returned backstage to continue using the scooter.
“I’m Not Missing WrestleMania”: Finn Balor
Ahead of WrestleMania, Bruce Prichard asked Balor if he would be ready in time. The former Judgment Day leader insisted there was no chance he would miss WWE’s biggest show of the year.
“No. It was a conversation with Bruce [Prichard] the next week, it was actually right before that promo that we were doing. ‘Hey, can you make it? It’s two weeks away.’ I said, ‘Dude, I can make it. Just trust me, I can make it. I’m not missing WrestleMania.'”
Despite his confidence publicly, Balor admitted he privately wasn’t certain he would be ready in time:
“I was not that confident, but I was at the Performance Center every day. We have a great medical team down there, and really, the guys down there got me right, it was right on the limit. The day of, I was strapped up, I couldn’t really flex my foot the way it was strapped, and it did get helped by the fact that it was a cage match, and they didn’t have to move around so much.”
Featured image: WWE
