Big E. recently appeared as a guest on the What’s Your Story? with Steph McMahon podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
During the discussion, the former WWE Champion and fan-favorite veteran WWE Superstar best known for his time as part of The New Day with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, spoke at length about his initial reaction to suffering a career-ending neck injury and the reaction behind-the-scenes to the situation, including some of the specific gifts other WWE Superstars gave him.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On focusing on being grateful that he was able to walk and had good friends and not dwelling on the negative side of the situation: “In that moment, I didn’t think about all the things I didn’t have. I was just so grateful for all the things I did have. The fact that I wasn’t paralyzed. I had friends. And the amount of love, man, I can go on and on about — it took me three days to get back to all the texts, all the phone calls. And I’m just on my phone the whole time trying to get back to everyone. But in that moment, it wasn’t about what I lost. It was, ‘My God, what an incredible support system I have.”
On his friends and some of the gifts some of them sent: “Thank God for the friends I’ve cultivated. So many of the incredible fans that I wasn’t able to get back to who reached out with so much love. And people can talk about how toxic the internet can be, how toxic wrestling fans can be — and I’m not dismissing elements of that, that certainly exists — but I saw so much love, and it made me feel so good. I had so many incredible people. ‘Seinfeld’ is my favorite show, and I had just so many people send me — Mustafa Ali sent me a ‘Seinfeld’ Lego set of Jerry’s apartment. So I played with Lego since I was a kid, but it was great. I was just like in my house, excited to wake up every day and start putting together Jerry’s apartment with this Lego set. I had people send me like ‘Seinfeld’ comforters and scripts.”
(H/T to F4WOnline.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
