Ever since Finn Balor stepped into the ring with Kyle O'Reilly at NXT TakeOver 31 in October 2020, he's found himself on the injury list more often than not.
Balor suffered a broken jaw in the bout and underwent surgery for the injury, which kept him out of action until NXT New Year's Evil in January 2021. He returned to the ring on that night to once again square off against O'Reilly, which led to him suffering an arm injury.
Speaking to the New York Post, Balor revealed how the jaw injury led to the arm injury.
"Still in pain, still very reluctant to get any type of strike to the face, which was actually something that led to the arm injury in the match versus Kyle (O’Reilly) the second one. I was protecting the jaw so much I actually weakened my arm," he revealed. "One thing that still hasn’t come back is the feeling in my bottom lip. It’s still numb. It’s like I’ve been to the dentist and you get that shot. Pretty much my bottom lip down to my chin I’ve still got no feeling, but the doctors are a little hopeful that might come back in a couple of months. They say nerves take a little longer to heal. Sometimes you’ll see me out there now if I’m doing a promo licking my bottom lip more or I’ll be rubbing it a little bit. It still feels like there’s Novocain in there and it’s numb. It gets dry a lot. But apart from that, no, I feel 100 percent."
Balor said he's still grinding his teeth as a result of the jaw injury.
When asked about having some reluctance to get hit in the face due to the injury, Balor said, "Obviously you wrestle for 20 years and you are worrying about your own performance and what you want to do and now all of sudden you’re worried about, oh I need to protect this extra injury. It’s not necessarily an injury, it’s more like a weakness. It’s not, oh he has a torn hamstring or something. You got plates in your jaw. You really don’t have any trust in how strong they are until they take an impact and then you go, hey, yeah that’s fine. So it’s getting over that first impact that’s kind of the block in your brain. Slowly getting over that. I’m sure I’ll be 100 percent on Sunday because I have no doubt Pete’s gonna hit me a couple times."
Balor is set to defend his NXT Championship against Pete Dunne at NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day on Sunday, February 14.
You can view the current lineup for NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day by clicking here. Fightful will have live coverage of the event beginning at 7 p.m. ET and a watch along on Fightful Scraps.
