In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet as part of the INSIGHT With Chris Van Vliet podcast, WWE superstar Braun Strowman discussed several topics, including his recent surgery, recovery process and more.

“I didn’t know I had stenosis to the spine, so stenosis of the spine yeah, it’s basically where it’s tightened around your spinal column. I only had 9 millimetres of clearance around my spine between my C4 and C5 vertebrae, I didn’t know that and I got hit wrong during a match and my head whipped back.

When my head whipped back and pinched my spine, it felt like a lightning bolt shot out both my arms and my arms went limp, so if you watch the match back, you can see in the match where it happened, there’s a point where you see me, my arms dropped to my side, and I kind of look around really weird and I find my hands and stuff start to move again, and I’m like looking at my hands and I go to take off running and I’m all wobbly, my balance is off and things like that.

We got the match finished and got in the back, and it felt like someone was pouring boiling hot water down both of my arms, it was on fire. I was in this really terrifying place for a couple of weeks not knowing am I ever going to have a normal life again, am I going to be able to do what I love, am I going to be able to just do anything, so it’s very fortunate that I’ve become friends with so many of the legends and things like that in this business.

I called Stone Cold, because I know Stone Cold went through something like this, because I come to find out his injury was almost exactly like mine, it was just a little bit more severe. He had stenosis in his spine when he got the piledriver and it pinched his spine and it pushed all the fluid out of his spine and bruised and he was actually paralysed from the neck down for like 30 seconds, so having him talk to me and kind of almost giving me the proverbial it’s going to be okay, it was a very big breath of fresh air, because like I said, I didn’t know what was going on.

WWE takes unbelievable care of their talent, and talking with Hunter and stuff like that, and him going look, what we’re doing right now is not as important as what you’re going to be doing in 15 years of your life, get it taken care of, you’re important, you’re not going anywhere, if you can wrestle again, you can, and if you can’t, we’ll figure it out, so having that pat on the back again, like giving that reassurance, because you’re not guaranteed anything, having them be able to put me in the place to have the best surgery that I can, go into the WWE Performance Center, having the best rehabilitation that I can, I couldn’t be more thankful that I’m taken care of by such an amazing company.”

The full interview is available at this link.