Donovan Dijak Recalls Shawn Michaels Stopping Him From Wrestling a Day After Suffering Thumb Injury in NXT

Former WWE Superstar Donovan Dijak recently reflected on his thumb injury during his time with NXT in 2023.

In February 2023, Dijak challenged Wes Lee for the NXT North American Championship at Vengeance Day. Apart from failing to dethrone Lee, Dijak ended up dislocating his thumb during the match.

Speaking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp recently, Donovan Dijak opened up about the injury and revealed that he wanted to wrestle the day after dislocating his thumb. However, Shawn Michaels didn’t allow him.

Below are the highlights [via Fightful]

Donoavan Dijak on how he dislocated his thumb at NXT Vengeance Day 2023

“No, my thumb is much worse. So what happened is the finish of my match at Vengeance Day was springboard in, Wes Lee super kicks me, I take the super kick, which sets up his—whatever he calls his back flip pele kick, Kardiac Kick, I think he calls it—when I took that, if you watch my right hand, I tend to sell super kicks with a big snap back, and to keep my balance, I shoot my hand into the ground, and as I’m shooting my hand into the ground, I dislocate it.”

Dijak reveals he wanted to wrestle the day after injury

“Yeah, it ended up dislocating, and I’m trying to jam it back into position as I’m about to take the kick. I’m trying to jam it back into position, and that didn’t work. So I got kicked. I tried to iggy the cameraman to get a shot of it because I’m like, ‘Whatever, if I can’t get it back in, at least we can make it part of the story or whatever.’ We actually replayed whenever I re-debuted on NXT because I was off for a few weeks because of the finger, which I didn’t want. I wanted to wrestle the next day, but Shawn was like, ‘No, no, no. You can’t.’ That was to build to Stand & Deliver. I really wanted to be on that Stand & Deliver, but that didn’t happen.”

Listen to his comments below:

Dijak was released from WWE in 2024. He is currently plying his trade on the independent circuit. He and Bishop Dyer were dethroned as the MLW World Tag Team Champions on tonight’s MLW Fusion.