A WWE star has said that he was temporarily blinded after his match at Super ShowDown 2019.
During his recent appearance on the INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast, Finn Balor looked back at his match against Andrade at WWE Super ShowDown 2019 in Saudi Arabia. He wrestled as the Demon King at the event and recalled getting painted with a different body paint since the regular one contained alcohol, which is banned in the country.
Although he had concerns, the makeup artist reassured Finn Balor that spraying hairspray over the paint would make it stick a little bit more.
“I’ve never told this story before. We done the Demon in Saudi Arabia. I wrestled Andrade,” the WWE star said. “We promoted the match, we fly to Saudi, I’m getting painted, and I was like, ‘This paint doesn’t feel like the normal paint. What’s going on?’ I asked the girl that was doing it at the time. I said, ‘Is this the normal paint? Doesn’t feel right.’
“She goes, ‘Oh, no, they told me I couldn’t bring the normal paint because it has alcohol in it. Alcohol’s not legal here.’ I said, ‘Did anyone think of telling me because I’m the one that has to wrestle in this?’ She goes, ‘Oh, no, but I have a solution.’ I’m like, ‘What’s the solution?’ She said, ‘Well, if we use hairspray all over you, it kind of sets it a little bit more.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, well, you’re the expert.’
Finn Balor recalled the paint coming off even before the match began
However, the WWE star noticed the paint starting to come off his body even before the match began and recalled starting the match as the Demon King but finishing it as Finn Balor.
“So they paint me, they cover me in hairspray. It’s also Saudi Arabia. So, it’s like 100 degrees, which is whatever Celsius, like 38 or something like that. So pretty much by the time I’ve gotten to the ring, it’s starting to come off,” the WWE star said. “Then we do the match, it’s a physical match, sweating like crazy. I start as the Demon, and I end as Finn in the match.”
The WWE star recalled getting blinded after the match
Although the match went well, Balor noted that his vision became blurry backstage. After this, he became unable to see anything due to the effects of the hairspray. He mentioned that he had to be helped by the other talent to the charter flight and only regained his sight after nearly 15 hours.
“So we get through the match. No injuries. Fantastic. That’s all I’m happy about. I’m watching, I think, later on in the show, it was Undertaker, Goldberg. I’m watching the match in a hallway. I’m looking at the screen, and I’m like, ‘Something like hit a smoke machine in here?’ It felt like it was being smoked up like on the entrance, but it wasn’t,” the WWE star continued.
“It was just my eyes because what had happened was the hairspray had run into my eyes and burned my retinas. And I went blind. I was essentially blind, where I had to be like linked by the guys, brought out of the building, just carried up the steps onto the charter. I couldn’t see on the flight. We landed in Germany to refuel the plane. The doc had to leave the plane, go to a chemist, and get some special medicine to heal my eyes,” Balor said.
“When we landed in San Francisco, like, whatever, 15 hours later, and it was just starting to unblur. But I guess all that hairspray had irritated my iris so much that I couldn’t see. That was probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me in wrestling, man,” the WWE star concluded.
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