JD McDonagh recently appeared as a guest on the popular INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
During the discussion, The Judgment Day member spoke about the spot that led to the injury that is keeping him on the sidelines from WWE for the past few months, how his recovery has been going, his infamous WarGames RKO spot and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview sent to us by Chris Van Vliet directly, where McDonagh touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On landing on the announce table: “I guess it was in the planning stage really. I needed to be on that side of the ring for something that was going to come up later on. So I said, I’ll just do it on the announce table side. I’ve done it on that side before, but whatever happened on this one, I just was maybe a foot too far forward or a foot too far back and wiped out.”
On his immediate thoughts after the accident: “In that moment I was just thinking, when’s the next breath gonna come? I knew that I didn’t hit my head that hard because I knew I’d missed a spot in the match and I knew what was coming up next. So I knew I wasn’t unconscious or anything like that, and then I don’t know, it was like an out-of-body experience, listening to Michael Cole with the concern in his voice. I’ve heard him all through the years being like, ‘We got to get a medic down here’, and then all of a sudden you’re lying at his feet and he’s saying it about you.”
On getting back into the match: “Everything goes really slow in moments like that. I wasn’t thinking I gotta get through this match. It was just okay, what’s next? Can I do that? Let’s do it. So I wiggled my fingers and toes and I was like okay, I can do that. I got a breath back. I can probably stand up. So I stood up and got back in there.”
On if he knew how bad the injury was at that point: “I thought it was maybe cracked ribs. I could feel my ribs on this side were like rice krispies under my skin, they’re definitely messed up. I couldn’t get a full lung full of air but I just thought that was because I was winded from hitting the table. Then the adrenaline kicked in and I was okay, I can do this. I can get back in there and do my part in the match. I didn’t want to leave the guys, especially because it was one of the first few weeks that we were on Netflix. Everyone’s excited about it, huge audience watching you for the Tag Team Titles, War Raiders’ first defense, yeah, I didn’t want to [quit]. If I can stand up and keep participating then I’m gonna.”
On what happened after the match: “So we got back behind, not even to the curtain. I had my arms over Dom and Carlito coming up the aisle way, and that was really hurting me. But I couldn’t take my hands off them or I would have fallen down. I didn’t want to fall down in Gorilla because there was loads of people waiting to go out to the next match and you don’t want to sell for anybody in the office. So I just lay down on the other side of the curtain thinking that I was out of the eyeline of people, but I was in view of the fans. They caught a photo of my feet sticking out into the entrance way they said ‘JD has just collapsed backstage.’ But I just had to lie down and catch my breath. It wasn’t a full collapse.”
On the WarGames RKO: “Yeah, that was my idea. My first idea was I was going to moonsault off the cage and they said, ‘No you can’t do that. Charlotte’s gonna do that.’ I said, ‘Okay, well then in that case, I have a slightly more dangerous suggestion, super RKO.’ They asked do you think you can do it safely? I said, ‘I’d have to eyeball it. I’d have to get up there onto the cage and see the height and see, but I reckon I could.’ When we were coming through, when I was 12 or 13, you’re just a kid, you learn how to bump and hit a crash mat or whatever. We used to have a game where we would try and jump from ascending heights and put our hands behind our back and just take the flat crash mat. So you’d start standing, might go to the bottom rope, the second rope, the top rope, we’d be pushing each other and daring each other to go higher and higher. At the end of it I was jumping off a ladder in the ring onto the crash mat on the floor and hooking my hands behind my back. So honestly, it felt like when I was up there on the cage just about to do it, and Randy’s walking over and he’s eyeing me up and stuff. I thought about all those bumps that I took, I was like okay, just do it like that. Just put your hands behind your back and leave your head out there for something for him to grab and, yeah, thank God it came off great.”
