WWE World Tag Team Champion Ivar recently appeared on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, where he opened up about his near-career-ending neck injury, the challenging recovery process, and how he’s managing his quality of life today.
Ivar and his tag team partner, Erik, captured the World Tag Team Titles on the December 16th episode of WWE Raw, marking a triumphant return for Ivar after a severe neck injury.
Recalling the start of his troubles, Ivar explained, “So it started in Brooklyn before WrestleMania. Me and Ricochet had a match. I took a European uppercut and I was like, whoa. Did a system check. I’m like, I’m okay. I’m alright. Then after that, I was doing Main Event, Raw, NXT, NXT Coconut shows. I was doing some SmackDown, Dark stuff. I was just on everything. Then it got to that match with Oba Femi for the North American Championship in NXT. We got to the second half of that match, and I just lost all strength in my right arm. I couldn’t pick him up, so I just started calling audibles in the ring where I wasn’t going to pick him up. We made it through the match, and that was that. The whole time we were checking on medical to see how I was doing.”
Despite trying to push through, Ivar realized he needed to address the issue. After a break and a concerning MRI, doctors initially delivered devastating news. “They read the results, and like, okay. This is probably the end of your career, to the point where they handed me mental health paperwork to kind of get that rolling because I already had the double fusion of my neck. So if we’re talking about another level fusion, because the MRI showed I had another herniated disc in my neck, the level above. So I had two levels, C5, 6, and 7, they’re all fused together. This was C4 and 5, so the one directly above. Another fusion would probably be the end of my career. So yeah, they were there preparing me for the worst when I went to see my surgeon.”
When his surgeon reviewed the MRI personally, there was a glimmer of hope. “My surgeon had read the result in the MRI, and he pretty much felt the same way that this was it. So for five days, I’m thinking this is it. It’s over with. I flew close to the sun and the wings melted. When I saw him in Birmingham five days later, and he actually had the disc for the MRI, he read the results for the MRI himself. He’s like, ‘Okay, we can work with this.’”
Ivar was able to recover his neck without surgery and has since returned to the ring. He is now the WWE World Tag Team Champion once again.
“So I’m pretty good now,” Ivar said. “To be fair, I do have permanent nerve damage and nerve pain in my hands, and that will never go away. That’s something I live with, but as far as everything else, I got most of my mobility back to my neck. It’s a little stiff now because I have another herniation, but I still have a very good range of motion. I credit that to yoga, pretty much. All my strength has returned to my arm, so I have no problems there, so it’s really just the nerve pain right now from the original injury that I have that’s permanent. I have good days and bad days. Some days I can really feel it. It goes down my arm a little bit, and some days I can’t feel it. It all kind of all depends, but quality of life, I feel pretty good.”
Ivar’s story is one of resilience and determination, culminating in his triumphant return to WWE and his reclaiming of championship gold.
You can check out the complete interview below:
