Braun Strowman Reveals He Suffered A Serious Injury Early In His Career

In an interview with Busted Open Radio (via Bill Pritchard of Wrestlezone.com), Braun Strowman spoke about a serious injury he suffered early in his wrestling career. Here are highlights:

On what he would change if he could: “The one thing, if I could go back and do it all over, just at the beginning, being a little bit smarter with protecting myself and my brand, you know being a big man and not letting people talk me into dumb things that I shouldn’t be doing. Injuries happen, and one injury in particular was really close to ending my career, I ruptured a disc and it cut into my side nerve and it paralyzed my left leg. The folks with WWE, they take such great care of us with injuries, and making sure we’re running at peak performance. I went to Pittsburgh with one of the head neurosurgeons in the country, and they got in there and I had to be pushed through the airport to the plane and into the hospital in a wheelchair. My leg was 100% paralyzed, I couldn’t use it. I went in and had surgery, and an hour and a half after I came out of anesthesia I got up and walked to my recovery room.

The man upstairs has looked out for me throughout these times with stuff like that, and with veterans like Mark [Henry] and Big Show and the big men that have paved the road for where I’m going now. Taking me under their wing and teaching me a lot of the things to do, and the things not to do; I couldn’t have been put in a better position with everything. I’ve just… I feel like I’ve hit the wrestling lottery.”

On how he continues to top himself: “I’m not going to lie, inside my body I was doing the same thing [after Mark Henry says he was giggling and laughing]. It was hard to keep it straight for that part because of the bass deal, the strings breaking on it was an accident. I just had to play it up to the whole deal, and that’s what I love about our boss. Vince, his mind and the whole creativity it’s… I’ve never seen anything like it.

We’ve continued and continued to over the last year of all the different, crazy stunts that we’ve done, I think to myself ‘what are we going to do to, how am I going to top that?’ And it never fails where he thinks of something and it just hits a home run with the crowd every time, and if it’s just my being lucky and me being in the right place at the right time, I don’t know what it is. I’m enjoying the process, it’s awesome. It’s a fairy tale to me, this has happened so fast; July will be five years that I’ve been with the company. August will be three years that I’ve actually been wrestling, so it’s just still surreal to me.”