Bobby Fish talks about his tricep tear suffered in the most recent NXT WarGames match and the split of the Undisputed ERA.
The Undisputed ERA, Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, Bobby Fish, and Roderick Strong dominated NXT for the three and a half years that they were a quartet. Specifically, the group made their presence felt the most in the four WarGames matches that they were a part of key fall NXT TakeOver events from 2017-2020.
During the final WarGames match that the group would be a part of, Bobby Fish suffered a tricep tear which resulted in him missing several months of action and inevitably, missing the split of the Undisputed ERA.
Speaking about the tricep tear during an appearance on All Real Wrestling Podcast, Bobby Fish explained that the injury was felt within the first 10 minutes of the match, and knowing that there was a story to complete, he powered through believing that it wasn't as bad of an injury as it would wind up being revealed to be.
"I tore my tricep is what it was called, but it was actually that my tricep was severed. So I had a big laceration on my elbow in that match. Whatever it was, that caused the laceration, cut through the skin and cut deep enough that it actually severed part of my tricep tendon from the bone. So people will tear their tricep, but it'll be you know, a tear, it'll be ripped away.
"Mine was cut away as if you took a pair of scissors or an Exacto knife and chopped it. That happened maybe 10 minutes into the match. So like, I didn't know, the extent of the injury. I just knew like, something doesn't feel right back there. However, part of it was still attached. So because I thought like, man, 'Did I tear my tricep?' But it hadn't rolled up the way that you would expect a tear to roll up. So I didn't think that that was the case. It wasn't until the match was over, and Tara, one of our medical staff, was cleaning out my elbow to make sure there was no infection and she noticed because where she was looking, she should have seen tendon, and instead, she saw a bone and knew tendon was supposed to be covering a bone she was seeing and she's like, 'Okay, your tendons not attached.' So I went into what would amount to emergency surgery. It was supposed to be that evening. It ended up being the following morning."
Detailing his decision to continue the match, Fish admitted that it's not the smartest move and it may be the mindset of an era gone by, but he had always powered through injuries while playing several sports and throughout his professional wrestling journey.
"You know, it's not the smartest outlook, but I think since I was a child, and it's maybe a generation passed, but you know, I grew up playing football and lacrosse and doing kickboxing, and you played hurt. The generation of pro wrestling that I came up in like, you played hurt as well. So unless it was debilitating to the point where you couldn't walk or whatever, you got on with it, and then you addressed it after. That's just the way it goes. You had so much that went into that match and you know, so many other people involved and at no point was there any thought on my part, like, 'Okay, I'm going to get out of this match,' like, no. It's got to be finished, and then we'll figure it out."
Asked if he would tell somebody else in the match about the injury, Bobby said he might have told somebody, but it did not make much of a difference because he knew he was going to fight through the match.
"I may have shared some concern with somebody, but I don't think there was anything [that would change] because somebody else with that information isn't necessarily going to be focused on that either. So it's just kind of, I knew that I could still move, so just be aware. You know where you gotta be and do what you need to do. Just get through, you know, get through the match, still, you're still focused on making it as good as possible. So just try not to get in your own head."
As for whether or not he believes the injury played a role in the decision to split the group, Bobby says that the initial timeframe he was given for a return wound up being inaccurate, but he doesn't believe that the injury played too much of a role in the decision to split the group.
"There was some confusion on my end as to how long I was going to be out. So initially, the surgery, the recovery was said to be about six weeks, which seemed, you know, not very long, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. After the surgeon had described what they had to actually do, turns out there was a bit of a miscommunication, and the risk recovery was actually 13 weeks minimum. So yeah, things changed a little bit. There was a concern for like, 'well, what are we going to do?' We were involved in a pretty solid storyline at the time, going forward with Pat McAfee. So I think, not knowing where things were gonna go, exactly, but knowing that it was going to be something with that would keep us -- I think we were all pretty confident that that would keep us together. However, things change, and that had some speed bumps and hiccups and so things did end up changing. I don't know exactly, but I think that that led eventually to them coming to the conclusion [of] coming back to the idea of splitting us up again, and ultimately, that's, that's where it went.
He continued, "Yeah, I don't think it had anything to do with the injury and again, the injury was kind of a freak injury. Literally, a piece of the cage, cutting deep enough to sever a tendon is just one-in-a-million. You get sent into the cage, and you either take it with your face, or you put an arm up to take it with an arm. That's how it happened, you know? It wasn't a triple corkscrew flip going through a table. It wasn't an egregious risk, it was something very normal. Just kind of the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose."
Furthermore, Fish would talk about Adam Cole joining AEW, saying that he just wants all of his friends to be happy and he knows that Adam Cole is happy there.
“It's no secret, the four of us are legitimately close. So whether we work for the same company or not, we all still communicate with each other. So yeah, there's been conversations between Kyle, Roddy, myself, and Adam, and you know, those conversations never end. I mean, they're my friends. So yeah, I just want to see success come to each of us and everybody's gonna be happy and I know from what I've seen of Adam on AEW, so far he looks happy, and that the conversations we've had have confirmed those suspicions that he is happy. That makes me happy for him, for my friend."
Now, Bobby has officially joined Adam in AEW, signing with the promotion after coming up short in a TNT Championship match against Sammy Guevara. Learn more here.
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