Former WWE star Ridge Holland has addressed the Big E injury incident that has ruled E out of action since then.
In March 2022, an overhead belly-to-belly at ringside from Holland to Big E led to E breaking his neck, and effectively forcing him into retirement from wrestling.
Holland, real name Luke Menzies, has now commented on the incident following his departure from WWE.
In a new video on his YouTube channel, he said:
“Obviously the thing that affected me more than anything was the Big E thing.
“I just want to say that if I had a time machine, right here right now, the first thing I’d do is go back and not do that spot. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened. There probably will not be a day where I don’t think about it.
“What happened was we were supposed to have a meeting with Vince, and it kept getting pushed back because other people took priority, you had guys higher on the card that wanted to speak to Vince, so our meeting kept getting pushed back, and pushed back.
“We got in there, and we had a really good chat, and by the time we got out it was like 12 minutes to bell time, so we had 20 minutes to put this match together.
“The spot was Big E goes for that Suicide Spear, I move at the last minute, he eats s**t then I hit him with the Belly To Belly to put an exclamation point on that. In retrospect, what should have happened was Suicide Dive, that’s it, move on.
“Whether I didn’t give him enough, he didn’t give me enough, things go wrong, it’s not ballet, and it unfortunately happened and I’ll always regret that spot.
“I’m grateful that Big E, the class of human he is, forgave me and he’s been able to be so positive and move on with his life and go into punditry and all the stuff he does for the community, so he’s killing it.
“He’s such a good human being and I wish nothing but the best for him, and just for people out there that think there might have been any malice in there, there wasn’t, and if I could change it I would in a heartbeat.
“But what happened was it really shook my confidence. I contemplated quitting to be honest. When you’re going out there on the main roster in a worldwide spotlight, the last thing you want is your confidence to go, because it shows in your performances. As soon as you go out of the curtain, the people know. I think that’s what really harmed me from connecting, and I wasn’t in the right headspace to go out there to be honest.
“I’m just glad I had people out there to support me, my wife, my kids, and guys like Pete (Dunne) and Sheamus to pull me up by my boot straps and say, ‘Come on, we’ve got this.'”
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Menzies went on to say he pitched moving to NXT after the incident because he didn’t want the negativity to rub off on Pete Dunne. He added:
“Due to all the fallout, the confidence issues, we were kind of in no man’s land as a tag team. I didn’t want the stigma that came along with me from that incident to rub off on Pete, because I knew what kind of performer he was.
“So I wanted to go back down to NXT as a reset, but also to free Pete up, go do some of his stuff, because I didn’t want him smeared with the kind of bad vibe or the negative connotations that came with me, I didn’t want that to rub off on Pete, so I asked to go back to NXT for a reset.
“So hopefully come back up in six months with a fresh coat of paint, and we can start again, but that never happened. We had a semi-feud with Ilja kind of touching on the injury stuff, but it was a bit too close to the bone, so that got nixed, which I can totally understand.”
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