Big E Reflects on Losing the WWE Title and Suffering His Career-Ending Injury So Close Together

During a recent interview with Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former WWE Champion Big E reflected on the highs of being WWE Champion and then losing his title at WWE Day One in January 2022. A short time later, suffering his career-ending neck injury on SmackDown.

Big E spoke about how his WWE Title Match at Day One changed many times, as he was originally scheduled to face Seth Rollins, but multiple competitors were later added to the bout. Additionally, Roman Reigns was forced to withdraw from the event and his scheduled Universal Title Bout against Brock Lesnar after being diagnosed with the coronavirus. As a result, Lesnar was added to the bout, and it became a 5-Way Title Match. Below are some highlights from Insight regarding Big E’s thoughts on the event, along with his neck injury:

Big E on His Mental Health Struggles and Losing the WWE Title

“Yeah, man. I had a friend of mine who I’m now super proud of. He’s in LA. He used to work in social media for WWE, Anthony, but he’s doing his acting thing right now and doing well. But we used to have this thing, because we were both kind of quietly struggling with our mental health at the time, and he used to refer to me as the sad clown, because he was one of the few people who knew what I was going through and experiencing. We would also have this joke, and it was a dark joke. But his little thing was, ‘As soon as I retire, within 48 hours, put me on suicide watch.’ Because for me the thought was I always have this constant distraction of travel, of doing shows, you don’t really have time to sit with your mind. But I had that. But when all that stopped, my fear, and I had a real fear of when all that’s over, and you’re home alone, there’s no running from yourself anymore, now you have to really confront your mind and what you’re going through. So for the longest time, I had a real fear that if this came to an end, I don’t know how I would be. I don’t know what would be next for me. I don’t know if I would immediately plummet back to everything I’d struggled with.”

“But yeah, going from having the title, dropping it. We had that Day One PLE in Atlanta, losing to Brock, which initially that was supposed to be me and Seth. It’s supposed to be a singles match, but then Kevin Owens got added to it to become a triple threat. Then Vince, at the time, loved Bobby, so Bobby gets added to it, becomes a four-way. Then, at the time, I don’t know if you remember, Roman gets COVID, allegedly, who knows? But that was the rumor, he got COVID, so he couldn’t be there. So Brock needed a match, so he gets added to our match, and what was supposed to be a singles between me and Seth becomes a five-way, where Brock beats me for the title. But that’s the business, and honestly, the fact alone that I got to be world champion, a guy like me, is pretty incredible. It wasn’t the run that I wanted by any means, but I’m grateful that I got it.

“But to go from that, to having certain Raws where I felt like I was probably in five or six segments, and then I would have to do the dark match, I’m doing pre-tapes, and there’s a lot on your back. Going from that to immediately being thrust back into, and look, I love the boys, I love The New Day. But to go from, hey, you’re on the show alone, I think they were on SmackDown at the time, I was on Raw, to immediately be like, okay, the idea of you even trying to fight back or get another opportunity, we’re not doing that. Get back to the tag team, it was demoralizing, but the wrestling business is filled with ups and downs and ebbs and flows, and I think a lot of talent get too caught up in kind of the ebbs and flows. You have to be able to ride that wave. So for me the idea was always to fight back, but it was disheartening to be thrust back into a tag team, and then it wasn’t long after that where I get dunked on my head and my career is over. So yeah, a lot of life changes in a couple of months, but more than anything, I’m just so grateful that I had the tools with meditation to be able to deal with it all.”

Big E on Remembering the Night of His Neck Injury

“Yeah. So I remember we had the tag team match. Thankfully, I didn’t have a concussion at all. I didn’t end up going out, none of those things. So I was with it the whole time. So we had this tag team match, and it was me and Kofi. Woods at the time, I think, was out. Can’t remember [specifically why], a nagging injury he was out with, but he was close to coming back, but he wasn’t quite ready. So it was me and Kofi against the Brawling Brutes. I think Sheamus was on the floor at the time, it was Pete Dunne and Ridge at the time. So we had the tag team match, and I knew it was Kofi and Pete were in at the end, so I think me and Ridge need to figure out some way for us to be low at the end. I know a lot of the feedback I was getting oftentimes was, okay, not only are you a former world champion, but you’re a bigger dude as well, so they wanted me to have something where I was put down for a while. So instead of, hey, take a super kick and you’re down for the finish, sometimes I need to take a bigger bump to justify being down at the end. So I thought, okay, I’ll miss the suicide spear.

“I was going to take off to hit Ridge, he was going to move, and I actually ended up missing the apron, because oftentimes, when I missed suicide spear, I like to post on the apron as I spill out, so the tumble isn’t quite as nasty. But I ended up not having enough room to do that, but I ended up taking the spill to the floor. But the plan was for Ridge, I asked Ridge what do you want to hit me with? Because we’d worked for a little bit, and actually really liked Ridge. We worked a couple of times. We worked a singles on a house show around that time, I think the three of us did a pretty good job. For us, the idea of, let me just go in, hit on my moves, and make myself look good. It’s not something we were ever invested in. The teams we worked with, we always wanted them to come out [better]. Whether they ended up winning at the PLE, if that was the culmination of the program or not. We wanted to make sure that every team we worked with, our hope was that they came out looking better than they came in.

“So Ridge, he said he could do an overhead suplex, and I thought, you know, I do overheads all the time. Ryback used to give me overheads. I don’t take a ton of overheads, but Ryback used to give me overhead suplexes. Never had an issue with it, so I thought, yeah, let’s do it. So he moves on the spear, I end up spilling to the floor, announce table side, and I remember just feeding up, and there he hooks me, things feel okay, I end up going up in the air. But I could tell I don’t have enough clearance, but when you’re launched, there’s not a whole lot you can do. I can attempt to put a hand down, but at the time I couldn’t really [react]; it happened so quickly, there was no time to really post or try to bail. So yeah, man, I immediately feel myself get dumped on the top of my head and spill to the floor. But honestly, at the time I didn’t really think much of it.”

On Not Being in a Great Deal of Pain

“No, not really. I was able to move my fingers and toes right away, just to make sure. I was like, that’s fine. I didn’t go out at all, I didn’t have a headache, didn’t have a concussion. I thought, again, I’m by no means a medical expert, I thought maybe I got a contusion, some kind of neck contusion or something. Let me just stay down for a little bit. I was like, ah, this isn’t great, but I’m not in pain. Maybe I’ll be out for a month or so. Just let this thing heal up, and I’ll be fine. Not a big deal. Thankfully, Dr. Pescasio, who always sits ringside, well, there’s always a doctor sitting ringside, but at the time she was sitting ringside, also from Tampa, my fellow Tampanian. So she was there, she saw it immediately and rushed over. So before I really even had a chance to kind of get my bearings and start moving. I had to be down anyway, so I figured, like, I’m here selling, so I’m just gonna be down. She rushes over, and I felt like it all happened very, very quickly. I said it tongue in cheek, but the very first thing I say as she rushes over is ‘I need to get a new job.’ Just because, you know, between all the ACLs and the right patella and the left back, and I had a herniated disc, I actually missed some time Survivor Series during the pandemic because I herniated a disc.

“I missed that Survivor Series. I was supposed to be on the Survivor Series team, but I missed some time because I herniated a disc in my neck, and it wasn’t that bad, but I had some weakness in one of my arms, and just not something that I wanted to mess around with. So I was just thinking about all the injuries and everything I’ve done to my body. I told myself for the longest time, see, I’m grateful for the old timers and everything they’ve contributed, but I see so many of the vets who are in their 40s and their 50s and 60s, and so many of them struggled to get around. I put my body through a lot, but I want to have a life afterwards. I want to be able to move around and to enjoy life and to work out and not be in constant pain. So I just kept thinking I put my body through a lot. But anyways, the doctor gets there and we get to the finish pretty much right away, I remember Kofi circled around to check on me, but it was pretty quick where they were getting the EMTs there. They put me on a board, they strapped me in.

“I just thought, okay, maybe this is a bit much, but with neck stuff you always want to take precautions. But thankfully, the hospital in Birmingham, which is where I went to get my meniscus done, so very familiar. It was very, very close to the arena. They ended up putting me in an ambulance, felt like I was at the hospital, felt like five minutes later. Then they ran a battery of tests and took some scans. Wasn’t long, I think Woods was in town, I think it was backstage, actually. So, the boys brought all my stuff, they grabbed everything, brought it to the hospital, and just stayed. They had a town to get to the next night, I believe, but those guys are family, so they stayed, made sure I was okay, and we just kind of waited for a while, and the news I got was sobering. I did not expect to hear that I broke my C1 in two places. I broke my C6, but the fact that they were so flippant about my C6, ‘Ah, the C6 is not a big deal. It’s a C1 that’s the real concern.’”

“Of all the vertebrae, that’s the one where, like, everything’s on the table, as far as stroke, paralysis, death, all the things that are life-changing or life-ending. So, yeah, getting that news was okay, life is going to be a little different. But honestly, even after they gave me that diagnosis, there was still some hope that I would be just in a hard collar. I can’t remember if it was six weeks or eight weeks, but somewhere in that four to eight weeks, so a month or two of being in a hard collar, and they thought there was a good chance that I could come back. But we took more tests, and honestly, the issue long term was [with] my C1 so I have what’s called a burst fracture or a Jefferson fracture, and that’s when the C1 it’s like a ring, and on opposite sides of that ring are where the C1 was broken, and those spaces were healing with new cartilage instead of forming new bone, so I didn’t have the same kind of integrity of the C1. So that’s been the issue, for my day-to-day life, very normal, I have no issues, but returning to the ring, and if this happened again and I don’t have the same neck integrity, that could be it.”

With his in-ring career ending, Big E has transitioned to broadcasting work on WWE programming, and he also works with the WWE ID proogram.