WWE’s Big E will be ‘at peace’ if he can’t wrestle again

During an interview with TMZ Sports, Big E opened up about his potential in-ring future.

Big E suffered a broken neck during a tag team match on the March 11 episode of SmackDown. While taking an overhead belly-to-belly suplex at ringside from Ridge Holland, the spot went wrong and Big E landed on his head, fracturing his C1 vertebra and C6 vertebra.

Big E tweeted an update earlier this month, noting that his C1 vertebra still isn’t forming bone quite yet. Big E said the plan is for him to get more scans at the one-year mark and see how things are progressing. Despite that, Big E wrote that the great news is he’s feeling “tremendous” and surgery is off the table as an option.

Big E told TMZ Sports that he’s doing really well and is able to live his life pretty normally.

“I’m doing really well,” Big E said. “I can live my life pretty normally. But [my neck is] not in a position where I should be ramming my head against other things, immovable objects right now. So wrestling doesn’t make sense right now. So I have to wait for that to ossify, to form bone, and to heal. But man, I feel great. I don’t have any nerve issues. Don’t have any weakness. Don’t have any atrophy. I got real lucky cause it really could’ve been a lot worse.”

When asked if he thinks he’ll be able to get back into the ring, Big E said they’re taking a wait-and-see approach.

“It seems like it’s one of those wait-and-see things. It’s one of those things where — initially when I talked to Dr. [Joseph] Maroon, who’s been great, really great, in Pittsburgh, and he suggested, ‘Hey, let’s look at this thing in a year.’ And that’s after looking at my last set of scans. So I really can’t say. I don’t know whether I’ll be back in March and 100 percent or if they’ll look at it and say, ‘Hey, maybe you should be doing something else with your life.’ For me right now, March of next year is very far off. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time worrying or stressing about that. I’m just kind of living my life,” Big E said.

“I’ve been with this company for 13 years. That means a lot of Saturdays and Sundays in Poughkeepsie and Kalamazoo and the most random towns. But now I get to live my life a little bit and see some friends and I’m enjoying just being human.”

TMZ Sports asked Big E if he’d be content if he were never able to wrestle again.

“Yeah, I think so. Honestly, my philosophy as a human being is learning to be content with whatever life brings you. I’m so grateful to not be in a wheelchair, but if I was, I would have to adjust to life in a wheelchair. That’s just how I am programmed. If I spend hours or days or weeks kind of mourning where I’m at in life, and life not being what I want it to be, that doesn’t serve me,” Big E said.

“Worrying about it [and] stressing about it only hurts me. It’s not useful. I think I’ll be at peace with whatever happens. Whether I can wrestle again, I’ll be at peace with that. If I can’t wrestle again, so be it. My limbs work. I get to do this [moves fingers]. It could have been very different for me. There’s a lot of life to live regardless.”

It was announced yesterday that Big E will be helping out at WWE’s talent tryout in Nashville, Tennessee during SummerSlam weekend later this month. The invite-only tryout is exclusively for current and recently graduated college athletes.