Finn Balor currently is on the WWE injured list while recuperating from a serious shoulder injury he sustained during his Universal Title match against Seth Rollins at Summerslam. That's not the worst injury Balor ever has sustained in the ring.
Far from it, actually.
During an interview with Screengeek.net while appearing at the Wizard World 2016 fan convention, Balor recalled an injury during his time at New Japan Pro Wrestling that nearly led to his leg being amputated.
Balor, who was training at and living in the NJPW dojo at the time, related the following to Screengeek:
"I got a kick in the shin and I remember after the match going 'Damn. Did I get kicked in the shin?' and I couldn’t remember. Things happen in a match and the shin was sore. I went to bed woke up the next and shin was worse. I showed it to the doctor and he said it was just a bad bang. Went to the trainer’s room, taped it all up. The trainer actually taped it up. The doctor saw it and the trainer saw it. Came back after the match and the masseuse was taking the tape off and I go, 'Man. This doesn’t feel normal. It’s really sore.' He just said, 'Nah, its nothing, just a kick. You’ll be fine tomorrow.'
"I wake up the next day and I’m at the dojo and put my feet out of the bed and couldn’t put them on the floor. I think man this is some weird kick aftereffect I’m getting. Strong stuff."
Balor said that Bad Luck Fale, who also was in the dojo at the time, saw Balor downstairs, recalled a similar injury while he was in Mexico, and advised Balor to go to the hospital immediately.
"He’s one of the very few people who spoke English in New Japan at the time, so he talks to one of the young Japanese boys and told them to take me to the hospital," Balor said. "There’s communication going on between the young boy and all these doctors and then this doctor is someone from somewhere that can speak English and he says: 'OK, this is what has happened. You’ve got a very serious infection in your leg. It’s eating into your bone. If you had waited one more day we would have had to amputate your leg.'
"So I get checked into the hospital, I end up staying there for 10 days. This was before iPhones and before Skype, so I couldn’t even get in touch with my family. It was really a weird time. People kind of go ‘oh you just got injured’ when really I was fighting in the hospital to save my leg. That was probably the worst injury but at the same time, it wasn’t a lot to deal with because I got better in 10 days and was back wrestling in a couple weeks. That was a really crazy injury."
Balor, who defeated Rollins to become the first WWE Universal Champion but had to vacate the title the next night on Raw due to injury, is still rehabbing after his shoulder operation.
