Donovan Dijak Wanted To Wrestle The Day After His Thumb Injury In NXT, Says Shawn Michaels Wouldn’t Let Him
Donovan Dijak recalls dislocating his thumb in NXT.
Back in February 2023, Dijak battled Wes Lee for the NXT North American Championship at the Vengeance Day event. Lee retained his title and escaped from the match without a thumb injury, unlike Dijak.
Speaking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, ‘The Disruptor’ talked about suffering a viral injury in the match.
“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 dislocated it.”
Dijak went on to say that he wanted to wrestle the day after the injury. Shawn Michaels wouldn’t let him.
“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.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Donovan Dijak talked about the current state of his career. Check out his full comments by clicking here.
Fans can check out Fightful’s full interview with Dovovan Dijak in the video linked at the top of this article. Also, head over to our YouTube channel to check out more of our recent interviews.
