In an interview with New Japan Pro Wrestling’s official website, Kota Ibushi discussed the Mallory-Weiss Syndrome that kept him off the company’s recent tour of the United States.

“I just felt absolutely terrible one day, and threw up two or three times. What can happen, is that there’s this thin connective tissue between your stomach and your esophagus and that can tear and get damaged. That’s Mallory-Weiss. The flu alone sucked, I had this awful cough and I felt a bunch of mucus in my throat. I thought I could clear it and couldn’t, then I coughed really hard, about five or six times and all of a sudden, there’s all this clotted blood on my hands.

I had a fever over 40 degrees at the time, I thought man, that’s it, I’m going to die and my lower back was in so much pain, enough where I was thinking, I don’t care if I die, as long as my back stops hurting. Bear in mind, this was at 4am on the day I was set to fly out to America. Even if I had dragged myself on to that plane, I would be nothing but a hindrance to everybody, I wouldn’t be able to do anything and if I felt terrible on the flight, I couldn’t just ask to be dropped off.

It took two or three days for the fever to come down, but the symptoms stayed with me for a whole week. To be completely honest, I’m still a little sore in the stomach area, so I haven’t been drinking at all, I’m not a big drinker anyway.”