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Ivar's Return From A Career-Threatening Injury, Getting Paralyzed In A Match, War Raiders Are Back!
Ivar (@Ivar_WWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his recent return to WWE from injury, getting temporarily paralyzed in a match, returning as The War Raiders instead of the Viking Raiders, how he made it to WWE, the comedy segments with The Street Profits, being a part of an independent show with John Cena and Vince McMahon and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "A real loser is somebody that is so afraid of not winning, they don't even try."
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“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 all right. And 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. And then after that match was like, okay, that’s no good. Then I went to Discovery Cove that week with my wife, just to be like, Okay, I need a break, like a reset. Usually, when we do vacation things, it’s go, go, go. I’m like, I know I need something where I can just relax and just see how I’m doing. We did an animal trek thing, where you interact with a parrot. I held my arm up for the parrot to come over, and I couldn’t hold my arm up. So that was immediately MRI, we’re getting an MRI right away. Then we got the results back and that was it, read the results. They’re 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 two levels, C5,6,7, 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 for when I went to see my surgeon. 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 think this is it. It’s over with. I flew close to the sun and the wings melted. But when I saw him in Birmingham five days later, and he actually had the disc for the MRI, and he read the results for the MRI himself, he’s like, okay, we can work with this. So with my original injury, I did the suicide dive, and my head got pushed back into my disc, exploded into my spinal cord, which caused the temporary paralysis and then pretty much emergency fusion surgery after that. This one, the herniation happened, instead of shooting in towards the cervical cord, it went out away from it. So he was pretty sure, because my symptoms weren’t too bad, we could probably rehab it without having to do surgery. And if we did have to do surgery, he knew a different surgeon who would go in through the back and just shave the herniation down arthroscopically, which wouldn’t require fusion. So he said on multiple occasions that I dodged a very big bullet.”
“I do have an opportunity, and it’s like the theme of my career. It keeps happening where things happen, and it’s a career-ending injury, and it’s like, oh, wait a minute, maybe not. And I’m just lucky. I’m not on my 9th life, I’ve been well past that. I’m on my 12th life. Pretty much.”
“So seconds for feeling. So I dive out of the ring. Someone’s hand gets me in the face, it pushes my head back. You watch it, and you can’t even tell that’s what happened. And then this exploded right into my spinal cord, I fall, and I hit the mat. So when I fall, a lot of people thought that I hurt my legs on the dive, because when the hand hits me, I lose everything. My body. I have no control over anything, my legs just hit the ground. There’s nothing. Boom. But then I managed to roll over, but I couldn’t feel anything. This is COVID. No one’s ringside, no fans are ringside, no medical is ringside, no nothing. I knew they were going to the finish in the ring, and I needed to tell somebody I was hurt. I knew the ref wasn’t coming out and checking on me, because they were going to the finish in the ring. So I went to put my hands into the x, the signal that I’m hurt, I need medical out here, and I didn’t feel my arms at all. So I go back and watch the footage, and my arms move, and I do a little X, but I couldn’t feel that. Couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t feel my legs, nothing. And then as the medical came out and stuff, I started getting crazy burning sensation in my legs and started getting crazy burning station in my arms and stuff. So the feeling started to come back, but it was just I was riddled with nerve pain, and then it was off to the ambulance. I did manage to ask talent relations for a raise on my way. Didn’t happen though [laughs]. I thought it was a good opportunity, but, yeah, that was crazy. The whole thing was crazy because it was COVID, so no one getting the ambulance with me. Went to the hospital, no one’s gonna come in to see me. There’s a whole bunch of people who came to the hospital, they couldn’t get in. And my tag partner, obviously the ref who I’ve known for so long Bennett, Jason Jordan, came. He was the producer, just trying to check maybe they couldn’t even get into the hospital, not even the waiting room. Couldn’t even because we’re in the middle of COVID. So it was kind of crazy. I mean, obviously it’s a crazy experience, but it made it double, like amplified, because of the situation that we were all in.”
“I didn’t have a choice. There was no option for me, because the the disc had exploded into my spinal cord. So I had pressure pushing on my spinal cord, which is what gave me all the nerve pain. That’s why I had temporary paralysis. As the swelling kind of eased up a little bit, I was able to get the feeling back as things kind of went back in, but because they were so damaged, they were going to permanently push on my spinal cord. So that would have been the end of my career number one, but it would have been hurt for my quality of life, because I wasn’t able to do anything. It was hard enough to get an approval to get a flight from Orlando to Birmingham to get the surgery with that surgeon. That’s the surgeon. I don’t think the people in Orlando wanted to do it. So I was lucky and got, got the flight. But yeah, it was I didn’t really have much of a choice.”
“So I’m pretty good now. 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 very good range of motion. I credit that to yoga pretty much. Then all my strength is 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. But I have good days and bad days. Some days I can really feel it goes down my arm a little bit, and some days I can’t feel it all, kind of all depends. But quality of life, I feel pretty good.”
“When I had this opportunity to do the singles run and it was going well, I had a conversation with Triple H where he said, Hey, how about we start pulling back off of the heavy Viking stuff, slowly peeling some of those layers off so we can tell more stories with you. I’m like, Oh, that’s great. So as we started to do that, I got hurt again, and then Erik and I were ready to come back. I think we were actually scheduled to return in Calgary at Raw. At the last second, they pulled our travel and said that we’re gonna hold off for now. Oh man, here we go. They’re like, No, nothing bad. We want to hold off. We want to have better creative for you. And then the next week, we got a phone call, Hey, how do you guys feel coming back as The War Raiders? And we were like yeah that sounds good. That sounds really good.”
“I think at this point we spent five years in the main roster and Erik and Ivar, especially with the Ivar singles run. That’s how we’re known. I think it would have felt like an erase of everything we’ve done. I don’t think we want to erase everything that we’ve done on the main roster. We’ve done some great things, including singles run, our Raw Tag Title run that we had, all the stuff that we did with The Street Profits, whether people liked it or not, it’s our history. I loved every second of it, and I don’t think we want to erase that.”
“I think it’s the moonsault, but sometimes it’s the Tajiri, sometimes it’s the forward roll to the floor. I mean, it kind of depends on the situation, but I’ve learned a lot. When I climb up the ropes it builds so much anticipation, and they just want to see what’s going to happen. Like, oh, my God, he’s so big and he’s climbing. So I tend to like that stuff the best, because I can feel the anticipation. I did the handspring back elbow, it’s exciting and it’s shocking, but that anticipation wasn’t there before. So I feel like for me, it’s better when I do the climb and that people are anticipating it.”
“Goldberg spears Rosey through the guard rail. It might have been the first through the guard rail spot that was ever done. They had us all planted in the crowd just in case the barrier came down on somebody, or if people wanted to charge, we’d be there holding back. That was my first one. I got in Heidenreich’s face on SmackDown once. He’s reading a poem in the ring I’m a member of the crowd I got yelled at by him. He came out, got in my face and attacked me. A druid at Survivor Series. I can’t remember what year, when he wrestled The Big Show. So they just so we had to bring a casket out. Then it got destroyed. Big Show destroyed it. They went to bring a second casket out onto the ramp, top of the ramp, and Big Show got put in that. Then we had to carry Big Show off in the casket.”
“Oh yeah. Big time. It was 2011, I hurt my shoulder, I went in for shoulder surgery. It was supposed to be like a little cleanup job, and when they opened me up, the surgeons decided to look where I was complaining my pain was in my shoulder, and discovered that my labrum was over 60% blown out, completely blown out. So that’s all he did. He’s supposed to shave down bone spur, do a couple other things. Didn’t do any of that stuff. He just did the labrum. So everything else is still wrong in that shoulder. But then I was just in deep depression. I’m just, this isn’t gonna happen. I’ve failed so many times. It’s just not gonna happen. But I love wrestling, and I want to leave my mark on this somehow, not just for having small roles in people’s success, their young success, like we talked last time, Kofi and Sasha Banks and Tommaso and so on and so forth. I wanted to leave some sort of legacy. So I’m like alright, I gotta go to Ring of Honor. That’s the only other place I can go at that point in time. So I juice fasted. So when I had hurt my shoulder I was like 350 or something like that. I juice fasted and did DDPY for months for my rehab, I lost 90 pounds and grew the beard. Had to grow the beard out and just evolve who I was as a wrestler and just give my all at Ring of Honor. I did a tryout camp there in 2013 and I was wearing a singlet at the time, but my stomach didn’t look too flattering in the singlet, even though I’d lost all the weight, just kind of loose skin or whatever. Delerious, who was the booker at the time, he got the idea to have me wear something to cover up my midsection. That was kind of the genesis of the war belt that I wear, which took me on this path into the Viking culture going forward. So out of that camp, 2014, Top Prospect tournament comes around, and names are getting announced for it, there’s eight people, seven names were announced. I’m like, I guess it’s just this isn’t gonna happen. And then I get an email, Hey, we want you for the tournament. So I was like, they didn’t contact me for the tournament until they already announced the other seven. I was like, Oh, wow, last second. So then I hopped in that tournament. Erik and I wrestled in the finals. I won, very serious about mentioning that. But then we became a tag team and that was where I found out that Erik loves Vikings, so we really were able to bond and mesh up in that regard. I think at that point we were a team for a minute. He had the motorcycle accident, I got the singles push, then he came back, and we were a team again. I think when he came back we became the team again. We both kind of looked at the landscape, and we had similar experiences with WWE, similar failures, where it looks like we’re good enough, but they’re just not taking our body type or whatnot, the 6 foot 2, 240 thing that was going on in that time frame, like it was very hard to get in. So we’re looking for the landscape wrestling, and we’re like, what if we just go all in on being a tag team? There aren’t too many teams out there, teams that are always teams that are just these well-oiled machines on the Indies, or even in WWE, they’re just these units that are teams, and they’re solidified as that, and that’s how they succeed. That could be our ticket to stardom in Ring of Honor to start, and I don’t know, maybe something like Japan after that. So War Machine was successful in Ring of Honor, and then it caught the eye of NOAH. We did a little bit with NOAH, and New Japan was helping NOAH at the time. So then New Japan ended up having us come in and get over there. So we were loving life with New Japan and Ring of Honor, because that was like, All right, we made it. We did it, and then we got the call from WWE. So we both had to pretty much give up on the goal. I shouldn’t say give up, because obviously it was always in our hearts that’s where we want to be. But we had to put it on the back burner and say let’s become successful somewhere else, as successful as we can get. If the other thing happens, great, but let’s just be the best that we can be, and go from there.”
“So, no. I’ve answered this a few times before. I mean, New Day’s having their turmoil now, but for a decade on WWE television New Day’s been together, and it’s never happened, yet. So I feel like we’re in the same boat, maybe we can do singles things on the side. Maybe we don’t have a story in the tag division and something opens up for you know me for the Intercontinental title, or maybe something opens up for Erik for the Speed Championship, just one below whatever I’m doing [laughs]. But I think we can do things. We’re both great singles wrestlers. I don’t think anyone realized that until I had this recent singles run, and he’s just as good. If just the opportunity is there it’s great, but I don’t see us breaking up. I don’t see us splitting up. I think we’re always gonna be there to support each other.”
“So it was this whole scary time. I feel like half the roster got fired, the lockdown, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the whole world. It was a scary time. We were told we were doing it and at first, I don’t know, the first hour or two after we were we were told, we were like, Oh, this is not good. This is going to be the precursor to you’re out of here. A lot of times when they take serious characters, or historically when you’ve seen serious characters, and then they take a really sharp turn into the comedy stuff. Then they’re doing that for a short period of time and they’re gone. We’re like all right, well this is the hand we’re dealt, so let’s do the absolute best that we can with it, and make sure that they can’t get rid of us because we’re so good at what we do, and that’s kind of what we did. I felt like originally, that whole feud, it wasn’t for us. It was for The Street Profits, because that’s their thing, or at least the time that was their thing. They’re the comedic, funny tag team. So it just felt like everything was for them, which is fine, totally fine. It is what it is. So it was our job to do the best that we could in that role, and I think we did. I can watch it back, I see memories of it and stuff, or just randomly running the fans. It’s funny because I’ve heard a lot of people online talk trash about that stuff. Never one to my face, but I was proud of the fun, comedic stuff that we did.”
“He’s on the main roster, but he thinks he thought he was getting fired. He was coming to his school. He was coming to Chaotic Wrestling at that point in time. So we’d see him there and his dad was a manager, Johnny Fabulous, on our shows, and did commentary for years. So I texted you about that. But then John made a name for himself. And then at some point in the late 2000s I want to say 2008 he wanted to do a benefit show. One of his brothers was a police officer and was in an accident. He wanted to do a fundraiser for their police department. So he talked to his dad, and they contacted Chaotic Wrestling, and they said they’re going to put on a benefit show. Vince gave the blessing for John to come in and also Eugene, who was under contract at the time. So we had this big show right by West Newberry at a high school, very close to West Newberry, Massachusetts. I wrestled Eugene on it, which actually the promoter gave me the option. He said, Do you want to wrestle in the main event with John Cena as a referee, or do you want to wrestle Eugene? And I’m like I think I want to wrestle Eugene because I was just such a wrestler at the time. I wanted to have that experience wrestling. I look back on it, I know it was weird. He was like, Are you sure you want to wrestle Eugene? Yeah, I want to wrestle Eugene. Okay, so I wrestle Eugene, and then the main event was Big Rick Fuller from WCW fame against Brian Milonas, who’s a really good friend of me, Tommaso and Kofi. He was in Ring of Honor for a bit, big, almost 400-pound monster. They were the main event with John Cena, who was currently the WWE champion, as the referee.
I gotta rewind a second, I’ll get back to it, because this is really good story, too. Johnny Fabulous was Rick Fuller’s manager. So John Cena Sr. earlier in the show he cut a promo. And this is running 2500 people at a high school. He goes now, usually I’m a heel that’s a bad guy, but tonight, I’m a baby face that’s a good guy. We’re watching the monitor in the back, I’m sitting next to Eugene, and Cena is standing up in front of us watching on the monitor. And when that happens, he just turns back to me and Eugene and goes, my pops is killing the business and walks off. It’s such a good memory. But main event, Rick Fuller, Brian Milonas, is for the Chaotic Wrestling Heavyweight Championship, with John Cena as the referee, who is the current WWE Champion, and Cena had Eugene put together the whole back end of the match to do whatever they were going to do, layer it with false finishes and belt shots and whatever. So again, I’m watching it with Eugene, all of us around the monitor, I just wrestled Eugene so we’re sitting next to each other. Then they start to go into this finish that Eugene called, and then all sudden, there’s a big commotion, like, what’s going on? And then in the ring appears a figure in a suit, and we’re like what? Vince McMahon [was there]. Eugene was totally confused. Dinsmore had no idea what’s going on, because that’s not what he called. Cena had him call a whole back end of a match without any Vince McMahon. But Vince got in the ring. I think he’s face-to-face with Milonas. I love hearing Milonas tell the story. So Vince was like, are you the babyface of the heel? He’s like I’m the heel. And he grabs his hand, and he raises his hand. There is a picture somewhere, what is going on? Vince takes the worst attitude adjustment ever, just as bad as that last stunner he took so bad, and he rolls into the ring, goes over the guardrail, out to a limo and takes off.”
“That I got to go to Pepper Lunch, to be back in the ring with my partner and for everyone who has supported me.”
