It has been a few days since Sting suffered a serious neck injury during his World Heavyweight title match against Seth Rollins at WWE Night of Champions (2015) on Sunday (September 20).
With reports about the injury possibly being career-ending running rampant on the Internet, the pro-wrestling icon decided to break his silence in an exclusive interview with WWE.com, detailing the extent of his injury to fans.
"Bottom line, I had tingling, numbness down both arms, all the way to my fingertips. And then, later in the match, I just fell wrong, whatever it was, and this time [the tingling and numbness] went down both arms and into my legs, and I couldn't feel my legs too well," Sting told WWE.com. "They just felt like rubber. I don't know how to describe it. I had to go down on all fours there for a minute, get my composure. I was a little...I was worried."
Sting, real name Steve Borden, 56, isn't sure if he will return to the ring at this point.
"Long term, well, I'm just going to take care of the short term first and see how the long term might play out," he said, adding that under the right circumstance, he would consider returning.
Sting sustained the neck injury after taking a buckle bomb from Rollins. The injury paved the way for an improbable finish to the match with Rollins wiggling out of the Scorpion Deathlock and rolling Sting up for the pinfall.
Following the match, Sting had to undergo a CT scan and MRI at a hospital.
"They mentioned cervical spinal stenosis, but that's only part of what I heard," the wrestling superstar recalled about what doctors told his wife. "I don't know if there's anything else. The doctor did tell my wife, "He's going to have to get this dealt with. He's lucky he walked out of there."
Looking back at Sunday night's bout, Sting remembers the exact moment the injury happened in the match.
"Oh, yeah, definitely. Both times into the turnbuckle. First time was like a whiplash. It's my fault, bottom line. I know better. The second time, I went up into the air and back toward the turnbuckle like that, I thought, 'Well, that's not going to happen again,' and it did. The second time was worse," he remembers. "The referee, the doctor, they're all in there talking to me—'Are you OK? What's going on? Can you continue? Are you all right? Tell us what's happening.' And the whole time, I'm just thinking, 'Oh, man, not now.' I mean, I want this to be good, you know? And if it ends up being the last thing I ever do in the ring, I don't want to go out like this.
"'God help me.' I'm trying to just shake it off, you know? 'C'mon, c'mon,'" he continued. "I'm stamping my feet or moving my toes, just trying to get a feel back, get my legs back underneath me. It started to kind of clear up a little bit. My fingers were still tingling and all that, but my legs were not at that point. I said, 'Let me try to continue, let's just try it.' So I just stood up and walked away from them, and we continued."
Despite the severity of the injury, Sting stated that Rollins is one of the greatest wrestlers that he has ever competed against, commenting that The Architect has that "it" factor.
For his own career, though, Sting is taking a wait-and-see approach.
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