Erik On War Raiders, His Near-Fatal Motorcycle Accident, Tag Team Champs, Viking Experience

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Erik (@Erik_WWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas to discuss his return from neck surgery, being in a scary motorcycle accident and being told he shouldn't have survived, winning the Tag Team Championships with Ivar, the name changes that included The Viking Experience and The Viking Raiders, facing Mark Hendry in a match on SmackDown in 2006, being married to Sarah Logan (Valhalla) and when fans should expect her to return and more!

Quote I'm thinking about: "Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in." — Bill Bradley

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On being a tag team wrestler:

"When we first got teamed up, because it wasn't even our idea to team up. We wrestled in the Top Prospect Tournament. You had Ivar on the show. He's going to be very, very proud of the fact that he won that match. Every time we go to Pittsburgh, he tells everyone in the building from the guys sweeping up the trash to Randy Orton and Triple H in the back that in Pittsburgh, he pinned me. So make sure this goes on the podcast, because that's his most important thing that he brags about all the time. But yeah, after that match, I think Ring of Honor just liked how we looked together in the ring and they were like they both have beards, and both kind of this smash mouth thing. We'll team them up. I'd only met him once before, and we talked, we had a lot of mutual friends and we got along right away. But at the same time, we had a conversation. We're like, well there's not really space on the Ring of Honor roster for us to be singles guys. Let's do this tag team for a little bit, and then we'll turn on each other, we'll split up, and then go our separate ways. And then 11 years later, I think at this point, no split up."

On competing at WrestleMania:

"Who could have ever drawn that play up? Especially because he and I both at different points in our career, in our lives, had some type of traumatic injury, accident, where we were told you should never wrestle again. I was told I shouldn't have been alive, I should have died. So it's a wild, wild ride that you can't script that."

On the motorcycle accident:

"So in 2014 actually, just after War Machine started rolling. He and I spent 11 or 12 years each not making any money in wrestling, basically both giving up on making wrestling our career. We get offered Ring of Honor contracts. We start wrestling. Everything's starting to go good. Then like I had done every day for two years, I got on my motorcycle, went to the gym, left the gym on my way to get something to eat. A girl was texting at a stop sign and she just pulled out right in front of my motorcycle. So I was going about 55 miles an hour, and she was maybe 30 feet in front of me, maybe. I hadn't even had the conscious decision to brake, whether I was going to try to brake and turn to miss her or lay my bike down, I just kind of said, Oh. I didn't even get the full word out of my mouth, so I wasn't even censoring myself, and I smashed into the back of her car. So instead of hitting the hood, I had turned and jerked the wheel and I hit the back seat. So because I had torqued the handlebars like this, I broke my left thumb. I shattered everything above my left arm to my elbow to my shoulder. Then I went up over my handlebars. I punched out her rear window with my face, lacerated above my eye, broke my nose, but I didn't break the cartilage. I broke the bone, the skull, hit my knee, and then I stood up, and my arm was like wiggling. The girl comes out of the car, and she's crying. She's like, do you need me to call the ambulance? And I was like, Yes, please. Then the ambulance shows up and they pull up across the street or across the intersection."

You're still standing?

"Yeah, I was. I had sat down at that point, and I just stood up off the off the curb, and I started walking to the ambulance. I remember that I saw the ambulance and the paramedic grabbed a body bag out of the back, because they just assumed from the call that I was dead. I walked over and there's literally a body bag on the ground. I'm like full Walking Dead, right? Because my whole face is like gnarled up with blood and stuff and the paramedic looks at me, and he's like, 'Sir, you're not supposed to be walking.' I'm sure I was in shock at this point, and I was like, 'Do you want me to go sit back down?' He said, 'No, no, no, you're already over here. I just want to stabilize your neck before you do anything else.' I was like, okay. He's like, 'Unless you want to walk to the hospital.' I was like, 'How far is the hospital?' He's like, 'Oh, it's about three miles.' And I was like, No, I'll take the ride. I'm sure he was teasing me at that point, but I was in so much shock that I didn't know what was going on. Then everybody I talked to after that, the emergency room docs, the surgeon, all the doctors were basically like people don't typically live, because I wasn't wearing a helmet." 

"We've talked back and forth on whether or not that actually saved my life or not, and I'm not advocating that you shouldn't wear a helmet on a bike. I'm just saying mine one in a million chance, because I hit the window with my head, and there's a chance if I was wearing a helmet, it would have been bigger, and I could have hit the cross guard over the top of the car, that might have snapped my neck. It might not have, I don't know. I know that my dad has always told me that I give my guardian angel the hardest time, and I almost outran him that day. But, yeah, he was looking out. There was a reason that I survived that, and a reason that I was there. So then the doctors were like, 'Yeah, dude, you should be dead. You should have died in the physics of this accident, usually this is a fatal accident. There's no way you're going to wrestle again, your arm is completely shattered. It's destroyed. Everything from the elbow to shoulder is just destroyed, you're going to be lucky to lift weights.' Six months later I was wrestling again. I had two plates, 18 pins and screws and, I don't know, six or seven hour surgery, putting my arm back together."

On having a new lease on life:

"In a way, I was like, I've wasted so much time. There's so many stupid decisions, or I've worried about so many things that don't truly matter. I've let so much time waste, and I felt that I couldn't do that anymore. I felt like I had been given this second chance on life, literally, where it was like, I don't want to waste any more time. I don't want to take anything for granted. I definitely hug people more and was a lot more thankful and grateful. Because to have a doctor tell you should have died, not, hey you're real lucky, or this could have been bad. He was like, Yeah, dude, I can't explain why you're alive."

On his birthday tradition:

"Went to Japan, went to WWE, became a multi-time World Tag Team Champion on different continents, for different companies. All of the things that I thought my life were going to be is just totally different. Growing up in Cleveland with some of the bad decisions I was making as a younger kid, I thought I would be dead or in jail by 35. I genuinely didn't think that I would live this long and I can confidently and firmly say that every year since 35 has been the best year of my life. I've got a birthday tradition, I never thought I would make it to 35 so every year on my birthday I deadlift 450 pounds, just to be like not dead yet. My wife laughs at me, but she thinks it's funny."

On possibly not returning to wrestling after his recent neck surgery:

"Yeah, absolutely. So I got in a freak accident, I landed a suplex, I got dropped directly on my head, just one of those things. I think we kind of say it without really thinking about it that in wrestling any match could be our last, or any move could be our last, or whatever. We kind of don't think about the weight of that. I was on a live event, non televised, just a match that we don't really think about or we take for granted, doing a move, taking a suplex that I had taken 1000s of times in my career. Didn't think once about it. For whatever reason, on that day, I over-rotated and landed directly in my head. When it happened, I knew I was hurt, but I didn't know how bad I was hurt. I thought it was something that was in my trap, and everything kind of locked up. So I was treating it muscular. It got worse. We got MRIs, saw there was herniation in the disc. I kept wrestling, because I was like, well we can just keep treating this with PT. I was talking with doctors. I was doing whatever we did. I was doing PT like 3, 4, 5, times a week. I was getting dry needling, scraping, everything, trying to mitigate all the stuff I was doing. I was doing electric therapy and stuff like that, trying to stimulate the nerves, trying to doing everything I could to avoid surgery. But at the same time, I was wrestling every single week, I didn't miss a match, and then I took another bad fall, just got tumbled up going over the ropes one time and it actually didn't even hit my neck. I hit my elbow on the apron on the way over, and then three days later my tricep disappeared, my right lat shrank like half in size, and then my right pec flattened within days. I came in, and I was terrified. So I came into work that week, and we were scheduled for a match, actually, against New Day. Ironically enough, we were scheduled to wrestle The New Day. I sat down with medical, I sat down with Triple H and everybody, the consensus was, 'Hey, you're going to Birmingham tomorrow. You're not flying home, cancel plans. We're flying you from TV to Birmingham.' I saw Dr Cordova. We did try a nerve block thing, because he was like, hey, maybe we can reverse some of this. So we tried that before cutting and then that didn't have the effect that anyone wanted. So we did neck surgery but it was immediate, it was fast. It was like, bang, bang, bang." 

That sounds scary. 

"It was. They’re going through the front now. So it's ACDF surgery. It's at level six, seven. Ivar’s got two levels. So his is actually the one above and mine, but our symptoms are totally different, even down to the fingers, our nerve pathway, the way that my nerve pathway was affected was totally different than his. So it's funny that we both have surgically repaired necks, but our injuries couldn't be more separate. But yeah, I've always been a fast healer. After the motorcycle wreck I was back in six months, so in my brain I was like, I'll be back in six months. I've done this before, it's fine. Six months came, I went for the scan, still didn't have full fusion, seven months no fusion, eight months no fusion, nine months no fusion. Now I'm getting scared. What happens if this doesn't fully fuse? What is life without wrestling? How does this go on? Then thank God, finally it did fuse. We showed full fusion, I was able to start training again, get back really quickly. But then it ended up being 13 months, I think, from surgery that I was out. There were definitely some times of like, this might be the end. So I was thinking, and I'm texting with Ivar, and talking to my wife every day, how do we go from here? What happens now? So it’s sobering to be struck there. So, then having the motorcycle wreck, then having the neck surgery. There's all of this. Like, Hey, dude, don't take anything for granted. Not a single flight, not a single match, not a single move, not a single day. Then with kids, you know this is bad as anybody, the days are long and the years are short." 

"So my oldest is already four years old. Even though I know you shouldn't take anything for granted, you get weighed down by just how hard that is, not sleeping, not whatever, you know what I mean. I heard something that was like, parenting is only hard for good parents. I'm not saying that I'm the best parent in the world. I know I'm not. I just try my best every day. I care. We're up at night. We're up early, sleep late, whatever we have to do. I'm not trying to say that I'm better than anybody else, but you think about that, and you think about those kids and you just try to soak all that stuff in, even when it's hard. It's something that Sarah and I talk about a lot, like, wow, it's hard. I remember with Cash, she's breastfeeding, and we're co-sleeping, we're doing all this stuff. She's not sleeping more than 30 to 45 minute stretches for like a month at a time. She looks at me, and she was just like how long can someone go without sleep before they die? I'm like, I don't know, but it's not yet."

On winning the Tag Team Championships again:

"Oh man, I don't know that I have the words to articulate that. It's incredibly validating and definitely something we talk about, appreciating things. We're grateful. We're thinking about them in ways that maybe when we were younger, or we hadn't almost died, or had our careers taken away, we're not thinking of. So to kind of put that retrospective back into it, we talk about soaking in it. So it's something that not just on the title win, but a lot of times Ivar and I will go to the ring, and one of us will take the time, will grab the other one. Maybe we're waiting for our opponent to come down or the lights have gone off right before an entrance music hits. One of us will grab the other one and be like, dude, soak this in. This is cool. This is a moment. When me, Ivar and Sarah all came out at Mania we did that at the top of the ramp. As we were walking down the next opponent's music started because that ramp was so long in LA, we actually didn't get the camera on us the whole way down, so we had a moment to look around. So I'm gonna try to steal a moment like that tomorrow or this weekend with Ivar. But yeah, the title win is it's crazy because it means so much. It means the company has faith in you, the company is making you the face of their division, whatever that division is. Whether that's the Women's Title or the Tag Team Title, the World Heavyweight title, you are a face of that company. That's such a vote of confidence, and such a meaningful thing on a professional level and a personal level. Whether we like it or not, we invest our personal kind of self-worth into your character, how much of you as a person gets put forward. This is an incredibly vulnerable art. Because if you saw Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow, you're gonna go, 'Oh my gosh, you play Jon Snow. That's so cool that you get to act and pretend to be Jon Snow. Oh man, that's amazing.' When wrestling fans meet you, they're like, 'Hey you're Erik, you suck. You're out of shape, you're this, you're that, your moves are bad, whatever.'It's personal and it's a different medium. We have this knowledge that for movies and TV shows, those are actors playing a role. Wrestlers, because there is so much reality and truth to who we are, the best and most effective wrestling characters are extensions of you, so you put that kind of forward. But as a negative side to that fans are like, Hey, you suck. Not the tongue in cheek, Hey, you're a bad guy, so I'm gonna boo you. So it is vulnerable, it's very vulnerable. Because when you get that confidence of the company saying, Hey, you're the guy."

On The Viking Experience:

"It was less than a week, it was like six days and then we were The Viking Raiders. However, the only thing that changed was our name. We were still the same people. We still did the same moves, we still did the same entrance. We still wore the same clothes, same horns and armor and all the stuff. I think we still even had the same music, they just changed the name on the tron. But people on Twitter have never let us forget, like ever. Every time we're on TV, we'll get at least a dozen Viking Experience tweets, which is funny, but yeah, we can go down that rabbit hole if you want to. It was a silly, silly, silly moment. Because that was our debut from NXT, and we had already gotten our name changed once, because we were War Machine on the Indies, then we came to WWE, and they couldn't use that name for a variety of legitimate and good reasons."

On the rumour that The Beserkers was a scrapped name:

"Not until the main roster. So from War Machine to War Raiders, the initial one was Doomsday Raiders. We were like oof. Okay, could we give you some ideas? So Ivar and I went and we talked about a bunch of stuff, we probably gave 50 names back. Then someone told us they really want to put raiders in the name. So we came up with 50 names with raiders in them, and the number one on our list was actually Viking Raiders. We're like, 'Hey, this is a name that we like. It kind of fits who we are, the look we've got, the energy we've got, I like this name.' So we sent it up and I think it was Hunter who was like, 'We're kind of thinking War Raiders.' I was like, well, let's give you some different ideas. He said, 'Yeah, but we really like War Raiders.' And we're like, yeah War Raiders is the coolest name we've ever heard. So then we became the War Raiders. Then we were War Raiders in all of NXT, we liked the name, and then we got called up. We were the Viking Experience.

Our first day on the main roster. We had never actually physically met Vince McMahon, but we went and stood outside his office to go and plead our case. Because I was ringside, this is fun, I was ringside, and I see our music starts playing, and it's The War Raiders up on the screen, and then the logo changes, and Berserkerz comes up. Now I'm looking like, oh man. Then that goes away, and the Viking Experience comes up. I look and I'm like, Oh no! So I walk up and Hunter was actually ringside, he's texting, and I walk up to him and I was like, 'Hey, dude, is this a rib?' He just shakes his head and goes, 'I wish.' I'm like, 'What do we do?' He's like, 'Well, you gotta go talk to Vince.' All right, cool. So Ivar’s plane was late, he gets to the building, I tell him we got to go talk to Vince. This is bad, right? So we go get in line, stand, we make our case. Said, Viking Experience sounds like a Disney ride, it sounds something like a small world, the tea cups and all that stuff. The Viking Experience, bring your kids, right?

So, we pitched that case, and Vince was like, 'Well, that makes sense, but we don't have time to get that through legal.' Because we asked to be Viking Raiders because we heard through a little birdie told us, when we changed from War Machine to War Raiders, it was they were really stuck on Raiders. So all of the names had raiders in them. This time, Vince was really stuck on us being Vikings. He loved Vikings. Little known fact, Vince was a big fan of the history show Vikings, which is probably why we got called up in the first place, because he was like, Hey, we got Vikings on TV? Bring them up. So he wanted us to be the Viking something, right? And the problem is, Vikings are a very popular thing in culture right now. So nothing could get past legal, nothing could get trademarked, nothing could get whatever. Viking Experience was shockingly free, because no one wanted to be that, including us. So we asked to be Viking Raiders. By this point, it's like, 7:30 right? The show's going on at eight. He was like, 'Well, we can't get this cleared through legal at this point. So what we'll do is, you'll be the Viking Experience today, and if we really don't like it, then we'll be Viking Raiders next week. And you know, no press is bad press. So worst case scenario, people will talk. They'll be talking about you.' So we're like, okay, and as we're leaving the office, kind of in an afterthought, he goes, 'Oh and by the way, one of you is Ivar, and one of you is Erik, I don't care who.' We just walked out. I looked and we were maybe two steps outside of his office, and Ivar grabs my arm for real, and he's like, 'Please don't make me be Erik. My brother's name is Erik.' The bully in my brain for like, three seconds, I was like, Man, I really should be mean. No, okay, fine, you could be Ivar. But I really, it was close to us being the other way. I was like, Man, I don't know how they came up with these names. Someone in creative might have just Googled famous Viking names or something. Because I did that afterwards, trying to figure out where they come up with these names? The first one was Erik the Red. Then it was Ivar the Boneless. I was like, Oh, cool. So it's literally just Erik, Ivar. You guys are Vikings, yep, Eric and Ivar."

On reverting back to War Raiders:

"More important than that, we got to be ourselves. Now, as War Raiders, we are the closest thing to War Machine that we've ever been. No face paint. We're not even wearing horns and helmets and armor. We're coming out in essentially biker vests, leather vests. This is what I wear to TV. I just put a vest on, and I cut promos like this on WWE TV. I wear a black T-shirt and jeans, which is what I wear every day of my life. If I'm not in gym clothes, this is what I'm wearing."

On Valhalla giving Michael Cole the antlers:

"I think that was actually her last appearance on TV before she wasn't able to be because she found out she was pregnant. I really think that was, it could be wrong. Internet, please correct me there, but I'm pretty sure that was her last moment on TV before she went on maternity leave. It was awesome. So it's funny too, because Sarah had played around with different looks for Valhalla and different things. Some of it was based on the TV show, or some of it was like Instagram or whatever, where Viking paint and makeup was really, really fun. So she had fun just experimenting with different things and different looks, and then she would wear like the skull mask, or she'd wear different things.

Cole during the day, we'd be in catering and Cole would be like, 'Hey, are you wearing antlers today?' And she's like, 'No, I'm wearing whatever.' And he was like, 'Ah, man.' So it was real, that was genuine. Sarah, again, didn't ask permission. She was like, I'll ask forgiveness, not permission, and didn't tell anyone. Just came out and put the antlers on him. So those reactions are 100% genuine. TV is live. Sometimes the best moments in wrestling is stuff that's completely off-script and just not [planned]. Because we all have a rough idea of what's going to happen, or whatever, to a certain extent. That one, the only person who knew that was going to happen was Sarah, and I don't even know how long before she knew that was going to happen, but she was like, Yep, I'm bringing the antlers. Because Cole, every time he saw the antlers got really happy, for whatever reason. He’s just a fan of antlers. I don't know. I can't explain it, but it tickles him. So Sarah jumped up on the desk and put it on him and that was just a real, genuine moment from all involved, that wasn't agreed upon. That wasn't like, Hey, we're gonna do this. She just was like, Yep, there you go." 

On Sarah Logan/Valhalla thinking about a return to WWE:

"Yeah, she is. She is a constant inspiration for me. She works so hard, she is so dedicated and disciplined. She keeps me on my diet so much better because she's so disciplined with hers. She's already running, jumping, throwing things, getting back into battle shape and getting ready. So yeah, I don't know when this is gonna air, but I'm sure it won't be too long in the future you start seeing her again."

On his enhancement match against Mark Henry in 2006:

"Yeah, Matt Hardy actually grabbed me after that enhancement match to check on me and make sure I was okay. He was genuinely worried that Mark killed me." 

On the stiff clothesline:

"Totally fine. Mark, super professional, awesome guy. I've known Mark for a lot of years, obviously, since 2006. Didn't touch me in the head at all, that was all body on body, and I hit his chest, and he's got a big chest. Had a bigger chest back then too. Had more weight on him at that point. I hit his chest as hard as I could. I'm still living in Cleveland, still have dreams of being a wrestler. I'm thinking this is my shot. If I do something crazy and they see this, maybe they'll give me a shot. [...] So yeah, I ran into him 100 miles and hour, I knew where to put my head so it didn't get taken off."

On a possible Erik solo run like Ivar:

"Yes, absolutely. I think there is untapped potential there where I don't have any doubt. Ivar proved it when I was down with n neck injury, give me the ball and I can perform at any point on the card. I have full confidence in my ability that you want me to cut a promo? Great, I'll cut a promo. You want me to have, whatever, whoever, anybody on our roster, especially our roster now it's ridiculously talented, like ridiculously stacked and talented. You want me to wrestle AJ Styles on Raw? Great. I'll tear the house down. You want me to wrestle? Pick a guy, anybody. I have a skill set, and I've been doing this since 2003. From the Indies, I was good guy, bad guy, comedy guy, you know, you've seen it just in WWE with Viking raiders. We're serious, we're scary, we're heels, we're comedy, whatever, wherever you want to go. We can do that. We have the skill set. So absolutely, there is a part of me that wants to have that spotlight always. We're in this as wrestlers, but there's also part of me that I never want that to be at the expense of being The War Raiders." 

What is Erik grateful for?

"Family, our farm and fitness, and faith."