Finn Balor just revealed one of the scariest things that ever happened to him in WWE, and it had nothing to do with a bump gone wrong.
While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Balor said he nearly went blind after wrestling Andrade as The Demon in Saudi Arabia. The problem started before the match even began, when the makeup team could not use his normal body paint because it contained alcohol. Balor immediately knew something felt off while he was getting painted.
“Yeah, early days, like, you know, when the paint was another weird… I’ve never told this story before either.
We’ve done The Demon in Saudi Arabia. I wrestled Andrade, and we promoted the match. We fly to Saudi, I’m getting painted. I’m getting painted, and this paint doesn’t feel like the normal paint. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’”
That is when he found out the regular paint had not been allowed into the country. The backup plan was to cover Balor in hairspray to help the paint stay on. Balor trusted the process, but the Saudi heat turned it into a nightmare once he got to the ring.
“She said, ‘Oh no. They told me I couldn’t bring the normal paint because it has alcohol in it. Alcohol is not legal here.’ I said, ‘Did anyone not think of telling me? Because I’m the one that has to wrestle in this.’ They paint me. They cover me in hairspray. It’s also Saudi Arabia outdoors, so it’s like 100 degrees, which is like whatever — far Celsius, like 38 or something like that.”
By the time the match started, the paint was already coming off. Balor joked that he started the night as The Demon and ended it looking more like himself, but he got through the match without getting hurt. At first, that felt like a win.
Then everything changed backstage. Balor said he was watching the Undertaker vs. Goldberg match later in the show when his vision suddenly started going blurry. He thought there was smoke in the hallway, but the problem was actually his eyes.
“So pretty much by the time I’ve gotten to the ring, it’s starting to come off, right? Then we do the match, physical match, sweating like crazy.
I start as The Demon, I end as Finn in the match, right. No problem. So we get through the match, no injuries. Fantastic. That’s all I’m happy about, right?
I’m watching — I think later on in the show was Undertaker and Goldberg — and I’m watching the match backstage, like in a hallway. I’m looking at the screen, and I’m like, ‘Did someone hit a smoke machine in here?’”
From there, things got terrifying fast. Balor said he was essentially blind and had to be helped out of the building and onto WWE’s charter flight.
“I went blind, and I was essentially blind where I had to be linked by the guys, brought out of the building, linked by the guys, just carried up the steps onto the charter.”
The fear did not stop once he got on the plane. Balor said he could not see during the flight, and WWE’s doctor had to leave the plane during a refueling stop in Germany to get medication for his eyes.
“I couldn’t see on the flight. We landed in Germany to refuel the plane. The doc had to leave the plane, go to a chemist, get some special medicine to heal my eyes.”
His vision only started clearing after the long trip back to San Francisco, but Balor admitted there was a point where he genuinely wondered whether he would ever see again.
“Then we flew, and when we landed in San Francisco, like, whatever, 15 hours later, it was just starting to unblur. But I guess all that hairspray had irritated my iris so much that I couldn’t see.”
Balor called it the most frightening thing he has ever experienced in wrestling: “That was probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me in wrestling.” When Chris Van Vliet asked if he feared that was it for his eyesight, Balor did not sugarcoat it.
“Yeah, like, on the airplane taking off out of Saudi, I can’t see. I’m like, ‘Is this it?’”
That makes the whole Demon entrance look very different in hindsight. Fans saw Balor power through another major international match, but behind the paint and the spectacle, he was dealing with a situation that could have ended far worse than anyone realized.
What do you think about Finn Balor wrestling through such a scary situation? Let us know in the comments.
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