“I went blind” – WWE Superstar Finn Balor reveals the scariest thing that’s ever happened to him

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Finn Balor’s alter ego is seen with paint covering his body and face to give him a menacing look. But things went south in 2019 during a visit to Saudi Arabia.

The 44-year-old star was scheduled for a match against Andrade at Super ShowDown, defending his Intercontinental Championship. He was set to appear as The Demon and naturally needed to paint his body.

During a recent interview on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, the former Universal Champion revealed that while getting painted, he noticed that it wasn’t anything like what he had used before. Since normal paint has alcohol, which is banned in Saudi Arabia, his team was using hairspray.

Finn Balor said he had no issues with it during the match, except for the paint coming off in places by the time the match was over. But later, when he was backstage and watching the Goldberg versus The Undertaker match, he started feeling something was wrong.

“I’m like looking at the screen, and I’m like, ‘Did something hit a smoke machine in here?’ It felt like it was being smoked up on the entrance. But it wasn’t, it was just my eyes, because what had happened was the hairspray had ran into my eyes and burnt my retinas. I went blind; I was essentially blind where I had to be linked by the guys, brought out of the building, linked by the guys, just carried up the steps onto the charter. I couldn’t see on the flight,” he said.

Later, when the plane landed in Germany to refuel, the doctor had to get some medicine for Balor’s eyes. He said:

“We landed in Germany to refuel the plane. The doc had to leave the plane, go to a chemist, get some special medicine to heal my eyes. Then we flew; when we landed in San Francisco, like 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.”

Former WWE Champion nearly got fired after injuring Finn Balor

Finn Balor has dealt with his fair share of injuries in his WWE career. Following the infamous shoulder injury in 2016, he returned to action nearly a year later.

His first singles match after his return was against Jinder Mahal on RAW. During the contest, Mahal caught Finn Balor with a mistimed forearm strike, leading to a concussion.

During an interview on TMZ’s Inside the Ring podcast, Mahal talked about feeling terrible following the botched spot. He then mentioned Vince McMahon met him backstage and even threatened to fire him.

Thankfully, the tension simmered down, and about a month later, Mahal was the WWE Champion.