Finn Balor sat down with Chris Van Vliet in London to discuss his journey from Ireland to WWE, if he thought about leaving New Japan earlier than he did, winning the Universal Championship and vacating the title the next day, how he stays in great shape, getting his head split open at WrestleMania 39, his last-minute match with AJ Styles, missing out a match with Bray Wyatt, wrestling CM Punk in Ireland, and more!

Have you watched back winning the Universal Championship?

“No. I get tagged in tweets daily of that spot, and I’ll scroll away before I hit the wall. I don’t like seeing it.”

When you won that match, in that match, on a scale of one to 10, what kind of pain are you in?

“No pain, but I knew there was a big issue, and it actually came out like three more times in the match, because any time I lifted my arm to hit the ropes, it came out. I remember I got whipped to the buckle one time it came out. So I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story, and I’m not sure if I should, but I remember at one point in the match, so me and Seth, I was very lucky to be in there with Seth when it happened, because Seth is an absolute pro, and we were able to communicate, and I was able to tell him, ‘Hey, I’m hurt.’ So we were kind of calling the match on the fly and editing spots and changing spots and talking the whole time, so the match that we’d done wasn’t actually the match that we’d laid out.

I must give Seth credit, because there was a point, we were outside the ring and I was rolling him back into the ring, and I said, ‘Dude, I’m hurt. I don’t think I’m gonna be wrestling for a while. Do you want to switch to finish?’ And he said, ‘No, stick to the plan.’ I just rolled him back in, and we stuck to the plan. I often wonder what that would have done for my career if we had switched the finish.”

The other what if in that match is if you change the finish, do you ever become WWE Champion?

“I could have been let go six months later before I even came back. Who knows? One thing that does bug me is that some people say, ‘Oh, that guy’s injury prone.’ One major injury my whole career, 24 years, apart from a broken jaw, which is a complete accident.”

It’s not like you tore a muscle running the ropes

“I’ve torn plenty of muscles, trust me. Yeah, actually, I think we are going to talk about the Edge cage match? So three weeks before WrestleMania 39 I get asked to do an impromptu [match]. I’m a Raw performer, but they say, ‘Hey, can you come to SmackDown and do a match on SmackDown? It’s like a six-man tag or something. I remember I grabbed Cruz Del Toro in a front face lock, and I stepped backwards to tag Damian, and as I stepped backwards, I tore my calf. At first I thought like Cruz was messing with me and slapping me in the back of the leg, and then I looked down and his arms were around my waist. I’m like, oh no, this is bad. So I tagged out, and I’m on the apron, I’m stretching it a little bit. Doesn’t feel too bad but I got to get back in there. I’m like doing the math in my head. How long to WrestleMania? How long does a calf injury take to repair?”

While you were on the apron?

“Yeah. I finished the match, and I probably made it worse by finishing the match, because you put more stress through the tear, and people don’t know I was on one of those little scooters for three weeks. We did a promo two weeks before Mania on Raw, and the way we did it, I think Edge was in the ring, and they just brought me out on the stage, but we shot around it, where I kind of like limped out and just stood there, stood on the stage, going, ‘I’ll see you in two weeks at WrestleMania,’ or whatever, and then they killed the lights and I hobbled back, got on my little scooter in the backstage. So there’s lots of little injuries that all the boys are dealing with all the time, and we’re trying to work around.”

Did you know you’d get to WrestleMania 39?

“No. It was a conversation with Bruce the next week; it was actually right before that promo that we were doing. ‘Hey, can you make it? It’s two weeks away.’ I said, dude, I can make it. Just trust me, I can make it. I’m not missing WrestleMania.”

How confident were you?

“I was not that confident, but I was at the Performance Center every day. We have a great medical team down there, and really, the guys down there got me right, it was right on the limit. The day of, I was strapped up, I couldn’t really flex my foot the way it was strapped, and it did get helped by the fact that it was a cage match, and they didn’t have to move around so much. Actually, a similar thing happened this year at WrestleMania with Dom. I had gotten beat up by the Judgment Day. I think I’d been out for a week. Dom was having a match against Penta on Raw. It’s like three weeks before Mania. I do the run-in, I come back, I beat up JD, I beat up Dom, I throw him over the top rope, and I’m in street clothes. I’m gonna do the dive over the top rope, but I’m in street clothes. So, as I’m running, I wear baggier T-shirts, and I go oh, I haven’t done the dive in a while, and I wonder, is this T-shirt gonna get snagged on the top rope, and am I gonna get stuck like Top Dolla? This was going through my head as I’m running against the ropes, so as I’m coming back I see the boys outside the ring. I said I gotta jump extra high and I gotta tuck faster than I normally tuck, because I normally kind of extend a little bit, but I tucked early and as I tucked, I popped a rib right in the air, not on the landing, or when they caught me, in the air. I popped the rib, and I remember the boys caught me, great, put me down. I stood up, I fired up like this, and I said, f*ck, I popped the rib, no! Then again, same situation, three weeks to Mania. How long does the rib take to heal? Oh, sh*t! So then now it was again just this last WrestleMania, it was race against time to get the rib. The problem with the rib recovery is you can’t do anything, there’s no rehab, you can’t do anything really. So it was kind of touch and go, and that was kind of a factor into why the match was changed to a street fight because I was able to rely more on the toys, the weapons and stuff, than have to actually, you know, wrist locks and twists and rolls and stuff like that.”

What’s the longest amount of time you spent in makeup putting on The Demon?

“Probably six hours.”

And then how long to take it all off?

“I’ll tell you a story. So, we did a photo shoot at the Performance Center. It was like a test paint on a photo shoot at the Performance Center. This was when I was in NXT, and we did it on a Friday; the paint team had come, and they painted me up, but then I was going to train in it, do photos, work around, make sure it doesn’t come off on the canvas, and stuff like that. So, after we’d done it, the team had gone, but they also didn’t leave the remover, which you need a very specific remover, because it’s alcohol-based paint. I can stand in the shower for an hour, and it’ll just be perfectly on me. You kind of have to sweat it out through your pores, and then you need like an alcohol solution to break it down, so it really chaffs your skin, you’ll be really red after it, and stuff. But they’d gone. But this is a Friday night in Orlando, and my sister’s getting married on Saturday in Ireland. So I have to catch a red eye at 10 o’clock from Orlando to Ireland, so we finished the shooting at 6 o’clock, run back to my apartment. I’m showering, I’m scrubbing my face, I get out of the shower, and I look in the mirror, there’s teeth and everything here [on my chest], there’s a big eye on my back. I’m like, I gotta go to the airport, my sister’s getting married, so I get dressed. There’s still a demon on me here. I’ve got it mostly off my face. Fly to Ireland, land, run home to my parents’ house, get the suit on, put this shirt and tie on. I go to the church, but little did anyone know, if I had to unbutton my shirt, there’s still the demon under there. But thankfully she got married by a humanist; she’s very out there a little bit, and so it wasn’t actually a church, and it wasn’t per se, a religious ceremony, so that gives me a little bit more.”

When did you finally get it off?

“The next couple of days. I’ve never told this story before, either. We did the Demon in Saudi Arabia. I wrestled Andrade, and we’ve promoted the match, we fly to Saudi. I’m getting painted, this paint doesn’t feel like the normal paint. What’s going on? I asked the girl that was doing it at the time, I said, ‘Is this the normal paint? It doesn’t feel right.’ She goes, ‘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?’ She goes, ‘Oh no, but I have a solution.’ What’s the solution? ‘Well, if we use hairspray all over you, it kind of sets it a little bit more.’ Okay, well, you’re an expert. So they paint me, they cover me in hairspray. It’s also Saudi Arabia outdoors, so it’s like 100 degrees. So pretty much by the time I’ve gotten to the ring, it’s starting to come off. So then we do the match, it’s a physical match, we’re sweating like crazy. I start as The Demon, I end as Finn in the match. No problem. So we get through the match, no injuries, fantastic, that’s all I’m happy about. Later on in the show was Undertaker Goldberg, and I’m watching a match backstage, in a hallway. I’m like looking at the screen, and I’m like, did something hit a smoke machine in here? It felt like it was being smoked up on the entrance. But it wasn’t, it was just my eyes, because what had happened was the hairspray had ran into my eyes and burnt my retinas. I went blind. 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. 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. Then we flew when we landed in San Francisco, like 15 hours later, and it was just starting to unblur. But I guess all that hairspray had irritated my iris so much that I couldn’t see. That was probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me in wrestling.”