The former Mojo Rawley had a treacherous battle with COVID-19.
Former WWE star and 24/7 Champion Mojo Muhtadi [FKA Mojo Rawley] recently appeared on The Sessions with Renée Paquette to delve into his battle with COVID-19, which was a lot more serious than people might have known. Mojo previously addressed his in-ring status in January, explaining that he had been suffering from lingering effects of COVID-19 since he contracted the coronavirus around May 2020.
Now speaking with Paquette, Mojo said that his symptoms weren’t too severe in the first ten days, but then things took a turn for the worse. Mojo described how bad his cough was, which caused the blood vessels in his eyes to burst among many, many other ailments.
“The first ten days weren’t so bad, it was just kind of the on-and-off spotty fever kind of the thing, like the chills and whatnot, I think most people get it. I’m not sure what happened from there but myself and the doctors have a couple of hunches but things kind of spun out of control, my fever spiked to 104, I was overheating, it was so crazy. I remember taking an ice cold shower to try and get my body temperature down and the freezing cold water would touch the top of my head and by the time it touched my neck, it was like boiling hot and it’s crazy that this amount of distance was causing freezing water to boil. So, I went to the hospital they checked me out and checked my temperature, they didn’t have anything to do but have my sit in a cold room to bring my temperature down but after that, I just started developing this cough and these breathing issues, I was coughing so bad that the blood vessels in my eyes burst so my eyes were bloodshot.
“It looked insane and of course, as a wrestler the first thing I wanted to do was take pictures to document it as we do. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t get a full breath and I’d have these little half breaths where the air would get to here but it wouldn’t get up to a place where you could really feel it. I couldn’t lay on my back, couldn’t lay on my side, couldn’t wear t-shirts because it would suffocate me, that extra pressure on my lungs were just awful, I had to learn how to sleep sitting up in a chair and I’m already the world’s worst sleeper so these things didn’t help. I was having to try NyQuil and all of these sleeping aids altogether to try and just sleep a little bit. Some days it was so bad that I couldn’t speak, I just couldn’t get enough air in to talk.”
Mojo went on to explain how doctors couldn’t give him any answers about what was happening to him since the illness and its effects were still being learned. He said that at one point, his lungs were so weak that a nonagenarian in his doctor’s office was deemed healthier than him, and it’s something he still has issues with.
It’s @MojoMuhtadi day on the Sessions!! We talk ALL of the things he’s up to, @TMZ, Paragon Talent Group, his engagement(!!!), the long term effects contracting COVID has had on him, and of course….this infamous Gronk Mania moment! @thevolumesports pic.twitter.com/OdPqlmGFEY
— Renee Paquette (@ReneePaquette) February 24, 2022
“Every day, week and month was an active process that I’d have to do and it was scary and I kept seeing the doctors and they kept saying ‘this is new, we don’t know what to tell you and we don’t know how to treat this but we can see that your lungs are bad’. I went to the pulmonologist one day and I did this like breathing exam and I remember afterwards going into the pulmonologist and I saw this little 90-year old woman on a walker and the doctor asked if I saw the older woman that was in here earlier and I told him yeah and he goes ‘her lungs strength is triple what yours is right now after this test’.
“So, it was literally over a year going to the docs every week, a few times every month and then testing me, me failing miserably and just going back home and hoping that time heals this and we’ll go from there. Don’t get me wrong, the craziest part was there would be a few days where I felt more-or-less fine and what I would notice is if I’d workout and tried to push it, that’s when I could feel like I couldn’t get the air that I used to and I tried everything. What was causing me to have good days and bad days, was it working out too hard was it congestion or allergies, I have no idea, sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, nobody can say why.”
“Probably the scariest part for a little bit of this was when the breathing was bad. It was scary to go to sleep because I was worried that I would not wake up, that I would suffocate myself in my sleep, especially with how tired I was getting at points, because I was not sleeping. I was worried that I would pass out and that would be it.”
Mojo then said he started thinking about his professional career and how WWE started a string of mass firings in response to COVID-19, noting that he believed he needed to get back to work or he’d get fired too.
“I [thought] I have to go back and prove my worth, show them why I still have a contract. And I just was not in a position to do that.”
Mojo says he knew he couldn’t do that and worried about lung issues, then wondered if it would be better to go back with WWE knowing he was recovering or if he should wait to get back to 100% so his character didn’t suffer. Mojo says he pitched a few ideas where he’d be a manager or limit his in-ring work, but it was decided that it was better to keep him home to recover.
Mojo said that aside from going in for testing, his match with Chad Gable (then known as Shorty G) was technically his final day at work. The match with Gable aired on the June 19, 2020 episode of SmackDown, and Mojo was one of many WWE Superstars released on April 15, 2021.
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