New WWE Tag Champion Ivar Reflects On 2024 Neck Injury: 'I Dodged A Very Big Bullet'

This past week, Ivar and War Raiders tag team partner Erik celebrated a milestone moment, when they defeated The Judgment Day to become new WWE Raw Tag Team Champions. It was a great moment for Ivar, and not too long ago, a moment that seemed borderline impossible, after he suffered his second major neck injury in four years.

Speaking on "Insight with Chris Van Vliet," Ivar gave a detailed description of when he started feeling like something was wrong with his neck, how he tried to fight through, and the moment he realized that wasn't going to happen.

"So it started in Brooklyn before WrestleMania," Ivar said. "Me and Ricochet had a match. And I took a European uppercut, and I felt like...I was like 'Whoa.' I did like a system check, I'm like 'Oh, okay. I'm okay. I'm alright.' Then after that, I was doing 'Main Event,' 'Raw,' 'NXT,' 'NXT' Coconut shows. I was doing some 'SmackDown' dark stuff, I was just on everything. 

"And then I got to that match with Oba Femi for the North American Championship in 'NXT.' And we got to the second half of that match, and I just lost all strength in my right arm. I couldn't pick him up, so I just started calling audibles in the ring where I wasn't going to pick him up. We finished the match and that was that. And the whole thing, we were checking on medical to see how I was doing. And then after that match, I was like 'Okay, that's no good.' 

Initially deciding to take time off, Ivar would wind up getting an MRI after he was unable to lift his arm on vacation. The results of the MRI were so bad that, combined with a past neck fusion surgery, Ivar thought his wrestling days were over, and even received mental health documentation in preparation for dealing with the end of his career. He would be under that impression for the next five days, until he went to visit his surgeon in Birmingham, Alabama to go over the MRI results.

"He read the results of the MRI himself," Ivar said. "He's like 'Okay, we can work with this.' So with my original injury, I did a suicide dive and my head got pushed back, and two of my disks exploded into my spinal chord, which caused the temporary paralysis, and then pretty much emergency fusion surgery after that. 

"This one, the herniation happened...instead of shooting in towards the cervical cord, it went out and away from it. So he was pretty sure we could probably...because my symptoms were too bad, we could probably rehab it without having to do surgery. And if we did have to do surgery, he knew a different surgeon who could go in and just shave the herniation down arthroscopically, which wouldn't require fusion. So he said, on multiple occasions, that I had dodged a very big bullet."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription