Finn Balor has pushed back on the long-standing fan narrative that his shoulder injury at SummerSlam 2016 turned his Universal Championship win into a tragedy, saying on the latest episode of What’s Your Story? With Stephanie McMahon that the run is a success story to him because he reached the top.
Balor won the inaugural Universal Championship at SummerSlam 2016 in Brooklyn, defeating Seth Rollins in the main event. He suffered a torn labrum in his right shoulder during the match. He relinquished the title on the following night’s Raw, was off TV for seven months for surgery and rehab, and has not held a world championship in WWE since.
Asked by Stephanie about how the title win sits with him now, Balor was direct.
“For me, that was the top of the mountain. And like, I know a lot of people say, oh, what if he didn’t get hurt, whatever, but that’s the highest you can get.”
He then made the reframe explicit.
“A lot of people say, oh, he got hurt and he relinquished the title. That’s, like, a tragedy. But like, for me, it’s a success story. Like, I got to the top.”
Balor told Stephanie that hitting the top of the mountain is the moment that triggered the deeper questioning about why he was still wrestling in the United States away from his family. He said it changed the entire trade-off of being away from home.
“Once I got there, and then, like, I became financially comfortable through the company, that’s where I started to question, like, why am I doing this now? Because I’m away from all the people that I love. Before, it was a trade off of you’re not with your family, but you’re following your dream. Now, I’m not with my family, but I have my dream, and I have, like, I don’t need anything else here. I don’t need any more money, I don’t need any more success. I don’t need any more attention.”
Balor also told Stephanie he never spent his career using visualization or vision-board manifestation techniques to chase belts. He treated his climb in segments rather than as a single end-to-end picture.
“Look, I know there’s this belief of people like visualizing and making your dreams reality by picturing yourself holding the title and all. That’s something I’ve never done. I’ve always been like, no, what’s the next thing I have to do. Compartmentalize everything and approach it step by step. I’ve never thought, how do I get from A to Z? I would need to get from A to B first, and then figure out the rest.”
He said the WWE Championship was a destination he could not even seriously imagine while training in England.
“It was so far of a stretch of reality, growing up in a small town in Ireland, WWE Champion, that my goal when I started training in England was simply to have one match. Like, that was my target.”
Balor told Stephanie his original plan when he came to NXT was that he’d run a year or two and head back to Japan if it didn’t work.
“I always kind of imagined myself going back to Japan to finish my career in Japan. Even, like, I didn’t want to leave Japan, but I kind of wanted to roll the dice with WWE and give it a try. And if I had a year at NXT and then it didn’t work out, I would have happily went back to Japan.”
If you use quotes from this article, please credit What’s Your Story? With Stephanie McMahon and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
