Updates from J.D. McDonagh.
The January 27th edition of Monday Night Raw on Netflix featured The War Raiders (Ivar & Erik) putting their WWE World Tag Team Titles on the line against Judgment Day’s Dominik Mysterio and J.D. McDonagh.
There was a point during the bout when McDonagh went for a springboard moonsault to the outside but when he landed, his head whiplashed off the commentary desk. McDonagh later revealed that he suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung.
For the first time since then, he spoke about the injuries when he guest appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet. McDonagh stated that he was not actively thinking about getting back into the match after he hit the announce table. He checked to see if he could still move certain parts of his body and then jumped back into the mix.
Time heals all, you know? I wasn’t like this the first week or two after but I’m feeling a lot better now. (I’m feeling) pretty good, pretty good. My lungs are good, my ribs are good. I’m just kind of waiting for the bones to knit back together before they clear me. I punctured my lung with my seventh rib… It didn’t feel great (McDonagh laughed). It was a freak accident on my part I guess.
I guess it was in the planning stage really (he said about what went wrong). Well, I needed to be on that side of the ring for something that was gonna 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.
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.
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.
It was difficult for McDonagh to breathe so he figured his ribs were cracked. He described it as feeling like Rice Krispies were under his skin.
He added that the adrenaline kicked in and he did not want to quit the match. He told the referee that he was good to go. A member of WWE’s medical team came to check on him and J.D. knew that if she checked his ribs, she would have pulled him out of the match. But she asked about his head and neck since that appeared to be the area of concern based on how he landed.
I thought it was maybe cracked ribs. I could feel my ribs on this side was like Rice Krispies under my skin. I was like, okay, they’re definitely messed up, and I couldn’t get a lung full of air but I just thought that was because I was winded from hitting the table, and 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. You got a huge audience watching ya, it’s for the Tag Team Titles, The (War) Raiders’ first defense… If I can stand up and keep participating, then, I’m gonna.
I’m not blowing smoke. The thought of stopping didn’t even enter my mind, and the referee came down and he asked me what city we were in and what date it was and I told him that I’m okay and I told him where we were and what we were doing, and I said, ‘Tell Dom that I’m okay and I just need a minute,’ and he passed the message on and then, the ref actually was — he got a lot of heat for it online. Shawn Bennett but, as far as him doing his job, he can only do or relay the message of what I’m telling them and I told him I was good to go, you know? And one of the WWE docs came out in the ad break. She checked me over and I knew if she touched my ribs, she wouldn’t let me back in there and she thankfully asked me about my head and my neck rather than my ribs, and there was a spot coming up in the match where I was needed so I was like, ‘I gotta go!’
There was only one change that McDonagh made after suffering the injuries and that was to switch a 450 splash to a moonsault. He knew he’d hurt himself even more if he did the 450.
Just what’s the next thing? (is what I was thinking when I got back in the ring) Okay, it’s a big back body drop. Not ideal. But, the one thing that I did change in the match and Dom (Mysterio) is gonna kill me for telling this story. The finishing stretch that we talked about, I said, ‘It would be cool if we could do 619, you tag me in, I’ll do a 450, I’ll bounce off and I’ll tag you in, you hit the Frog Splash. It’ll be like our super finisher.’ We’re super late in the match now so I have no energy left whatsoever, no air left, and I tried to say to him, ‘I can’t do the 450.’ But he didn’t hear me. He’d taken off for the 619. I was like please, God, just let him go up for the Frog Splash. He hits the 619 and he runs across to me. No! No! He tagged me in. So the one modification I made was I knew I’d really hurt myself if I did the 450 and I’ve done that moonsault probably 10,000 times and I knew I could kind of protect myself a little, and Ivar is a big guy too, big landing pad. So, I thought this is gonna be the last big move that I do. I’ll make it a good one and get out of here… It wasn’t like a measured decision that I made. It was all adrenaline in the heat of the moment.
After the match was over, footage was shown of McDonagh falling to the ground near the entrance area. He stated that he thought he was out of the audience’s view and laid down to catch his breath.
McDonagh did not want to do that in front of the higher-ups backstage. He mentioned that a week later, he was at home and his wife said something funny and because he laughed hard, he was winded via the lung and rib injuries and it brought him to his knees.
I was home maybe four or five days (after the injury) and I was walking through the kitchen and my wife said something funny and cracked me up and it brought me to my knees. I collapsed on the kitchen floor, from this laugh that just winded me.
So we got back behind — not even to the curtain. I have my arms over Dom (Mysterio) and Carlito coming up the aisleway and that was really hurting me but I couldn’t take my hands off them or I would have fallen down, and I didn’t wanna fall down in Gorilla because there was loads of people waiting to go out to the next match and you don’t wanna 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, a few of the fans caught a photo of my feet sticking out into the entrance way and they said, ‘J.D. just collapsed backstage.’ But I just had to lie down and catch my breath. It wasn’t a full collapse.
Elsewhere in the conversation, he detailed the process of his lung being repaired. McDonagh stated that he was lucky because Raw was in Atlanta, Georgia, when the injury happened and he lives in Florida which is approximately a six-hour drive.
If the show was across the country, he would’ve had to travel back to Florida by car because flying would have caused his lung to pop. He praised WWE for taking care of him. They flew his wife into Atlanta to be with him and then had a driver take them back to Florida.
So they take a tube that’s about the diameter of your little finger and they poke a hole in between your ribs and they stab it into your chest cavity. Because the lung had come away from the chest cavity and collapsed and they need to suck up all the blood and air that’s leaking from your lung in your chest cavity out so that your lung can expand and stick back to the wall of your chest. So I was on this suction pump pulling all the blood and air out for a day. Obviously, like, shallow breaths, like half lung fulls and then they change it to a different machine with a lower form of suction. So there’s less suction helping my lungs stay inflated. They’re seeing if it would stay up. Did that for another day and then they took me off the machine, took the tubes out, and my lungs stayed inflated and stayed stuck to my chest cavity. So they let me go home (from the hospital). I was blessed by the way. We were in Atlanta, Georgia, the next state up from Florida. If I had been in Colorado, I’d still be driving home, because I couldn’t fly. My lung would have popped… WWE couldn’t have been better. They flew my wife up. They extended my hotel for a week. They got us a car and a driver to drive us back into town but, they were awesome about it. But yeah, it was a bad week after the bump… I always remember this, that at the end, it could have been so much worse. I’m sitting here smiling and talking to you and I walked in on my own two legs and I’m gonna be back in a couple of weeks hopefully.
It is not set in stone, but McDonagh reiterated that he’s hoping to be back on the road in a month’s time.
I’d love to be back yesterday. I’m so bored sitting at home watching the guys traveling around. I’m so jealous. They’re going to Europe this week… So if I could be back, I’d be back right now. Hopefully — I’m going to put a timeframe on it and say within a month, I hope to be back. That’s what I’m working towards so whether that happens or not, whether the WWE docs align (with) that, we’ll see.
Elsewhere on the Judgment Day front, Raquel Rodriguez earned a shot at Lyra Valkyria’s Women’s Intercontinental Championship and Finn Bálor is going to be challenging Bron Breakker for the Intercontinental Title on Raw in Brussels, Belgium.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
