JD McDonagh provides injury update, timetable on potential WWE return

JD McDonagh is on the road to recovery after suffering a punctured lung and broken ribs in a late-January WWE Raw tag team match.

McDonagh spoke with Chris Van Vliet about the match, the injuries and his recovery in a new podcast released Thursday. He hasn’t competed since that Monday, January 27th bout with he and Dominik Mysterio against The Viking Raiders.

The injury occurred when he went for a springboard moonsault off the middle rope to the floor and landed on Ivar, but in the process, he hit neck-first on the announce table. He was checked on by doctors but waved them off. He blamed the injury on “the planning” as he hit the move on a different side of the ring than was originally intended. He said he had done the move on the announce table side before, but thinks he was “just was maybe a foot too far forward or a foot too far back and wiped out.”

“I was thinking ‘When is the next breath going to come?,'” later adding he thought the injury was just cracked ribs. He said adrenaline kicked in and that he was just winded as he continued to wrestle.

“The thought of stopping never entered my mind,” he said, saying he told the referee to tell Mysterio to just give him a minute. He said the referee took a lot of heat online, but that it wasn’t his fault as McDonagh said he was good to go.

He is back in the gym, doing low impact cardio and pilates with his full lung capacity back. He said his ribs are “good,” but he waiting for his bones to “knit back together” as he punctured his lung with his seventh rib. He hasn’t been back in the ring yet, but that is the next step.

His timeline is to return within another month, but that it’s up to the doctors to determine if that happens. He said he is jealous watching on TV every week, especially since WWE is heading to Europe for several weeks ahead of WrestleMania.