Donovan Dijak recalls wrestling with a broken finger in WWE NXT.
At WWE NXT Vengeance Day 2023, Dijak battled Wes Lee in a singles match for the NXT North American Championship. Although he came up short against Lee, Dijak also walked away with a brutal injury. The match ended with Dijak seemingly breaking his finger, and he later posted a photo on social media flipping off the camera using the injured finger.
Since leaving WWE in 2024, Dijak has joined MLW and continues to compete. In an interview with WrestleZone, he opened up about the injury and shared what was going through his mind at that painful moment.
Donovan Dijak on how he worked through his broken finger
When asked about the freak accident where Donovan Dijak dislocated his finger during the match, he explained that despite the injury, he kept wrestling and finished the match without changing the planned ending.
“I was very lucky because I didn’t have to. And here’s why. If you watched the match back, the final sequence of events is, I climb up for a Moonsault onto Wes Lee, who is trapped in a chair. Tony D’Angelo and Stacks run in and move him out of the way. And I Moonsault onto them. I throw Wes Lee into the ring. I do a Springboard into the ring, and he Superkicks me. And he sets up his Backhand Spring Pele Kick. That’s the finish of the match.
“So, on that Springboard into the ring where he Superkicked me, he kicks me and my left hand, which is this hand, goes down into the mat to brace because I did a big recoil sort of like… Got kicked in the face and as I drive this hand into the mat just to push on the ground, it connects in a way and catches this way and this finger just completely bends sideways.”
“And it had oddly been weirdly catching the mat throughout the match, so I could feel it kind of loosening up, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird, that never happens.’ But like sometimes the Adrenaline is running and just different things happen differently. But yeah, I felt it jam into the mat. And then I go to see what’s wrong as I’m selling and he’s setting up the finish. And I’m looking at it, and it’s sideways. And I go, ‘Oh, that’s not good.'”
Donovan Dijak made sure his finger injury was caught on camera
As Donovan Dijak dealt with the pain. He called out to the ringside cameraman to capture a close-up of the injury, thinking it would add drama to the match.
“It doesn’t hurt. But I could feel that something happened. So, as he’s setting up the finish, I’m trying to jam my finger back into place. You could see this on the video if you watch it. I’m trying to jam my finger back into place, and he’s not looking at me. So, he doesn’t know what’s happening behind him. So, he’s doing all his theatrics, and then he starts the Back Handspring, and I’m like, ‘Well, oh well.’ And then I come, I take the kick, boom.”
“Down I go, he covers me. And I’m just laying there looking at my dislocated finger. And I’m like, ‘What do I do with this?’ So, they’re doing replays and stuff.” And I just start yelling at the Roaming camera, which is the camera guy on the ground. I’m just yelling at him to get a shot of me. Because I’m like, ‘Might as well put it on TV, right?’ It just looks like he destroyed me and I’m just a mangled corpse, right? So, the cameraman gets the shot. The Director decides to cut to it. So, they get the shot on TV.”
Donovan Dijak shares details about his backstage experience after the injury
Donovan Dijak revealed that his goal for the match was to bring a fresh energy to NXT, especially as it marked his opening match since the Portland TakeOver in 2020. He aimed to show that NXT was back on the road with exciting matches for the fans.
“I didn’t have any time to soak it in or anything. Because I go through the gorilla, everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God! Great job.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, thanks.’ But the doctor’s rushing me past them like, ‘Talk to you in a few minutes.’ And I didn’t get to like… I was like, ‘Hey, thanks, man. Thanks for… Thank you, Shawn.’ And we just moved right past them to get to the doctor’s office because there was a doctor on site. So, he gets what he described to me as three good pulls before we decide it’s broken and I have to go to the hospital.”
“So, he… This was some of the most painful stuff I’ve ever done in my life. Because now the adrenaline’s worn off. He’s trying to jam this finger back into place. And I’ve had dislocated fingers before. This one [left ring finger] was Football in college, this one [left pinky] was Basketball in college, and this one [left middle finger] was pro wrestling. So, these two, the doctor just… and they went right back into place. This one, he’s pulling on it, nothing happens. He puts his foot on the table and starts pulling on it, nothing happens. So, he gets to the final one. And I’m like, ‘This is so horribly painful.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah. It’s probably broken, you have to go to the hospital.’ And I was like, ‘Oh! Sure.'”
Donovan Dijak on the story behind his viral finger injury photo
Two years after the finger incident, Donovan Dijak still has the tweet pinned on his X account, featuring a photo of him showing his injured finger. Recalling the moment, he said:
“The picture that’s still my pinned tweet just because I think it’s awesome. It’s me in front of a brick wall. That brick wall is the hospital in North Carolina. I was texting my buddies. And Mansoor from MxM was like, ‘You should probably take a picture of that. Because that’s pretty cool.’ Cuz I sent them a picture. And he said something like, ‘Why don’t you take a picture of you giving the middle finger?'”
“I’m like, ‘That’s the greatest idea I’ve ever heard.’ I had the PA that I was with take the picture, and then I put it in black and white. And yeah, we went into the hospital right after that. They took an X-ray. They were like, ‘Somehow your finger is not broken.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So, they tried to jam it back into place, that didn’t work. So, they were like, ‘Okay.’ So, they put a shot of something in there that apparently numbs it and loosens it up. And then it was the least painful thing that ever happened to me was actually the success of getting it back in.”
Dijak on the frustration of missing NXT Stand & Deliver & his urge to wrestle despite injury
“And I, in my infinite wisdom, desperately wanted to wrestle the next day. And I told Shawn immediately, ‘Listen, I will brace this up, I’ll wrap it up, and I’m ready to go tomorrow.’ Because I was on a… We had done well,l and I wanted to continue that momentum going into TV. And he was like, ‘Absolutely not. You need to take three weeks off.’ And I was like, ‘Great. Now, there goes my momentum. And now I am definitely not going to be on Stand & Deliver, and there goes everything I worked for.’ Because of this stupid finger injury. Thankfully, we got back around to it, and we got in Ilja for Battleground, which again was tremendous, and he’s tremendous. But yeah, that’s the story of my finger. I sold a lot of ratio T-shirts. So, it ended up monetizing fairly well for me.”
