Xavier Woods Talks Being Out Of Action With Achilles Injury: I Can’t Wrestle And That Hurts

Xavier Woods gives an update on his rehab and wants to recover not just physically but mentally.

Appearing on a special edition of WWE’s The Bump, Woods said his rehab for his torn Achilles has been going well, but noted that he still won’t be back for another few months. The reason for it is because he wants to be 100 percent healthy in both a physical and mental sense.

“Rehab is going great. I can now do single leg heel raises. I got a few more months on me, but that’s mainly because I want to make sure I am not only good physically, but also mentally. As someone who has been through injuries before, I tore my PCL when I was in developmental and that was a weird two, three months, this is the longest I have ever been out. This is the first time I have ever had surgery. Like a month or two ago, I had some real in-my-head issues,” Woods said.

The New Day member spoke about the importance of mental health and said not being able to wrestle hurts because of what wrestling was able to bring him. Woods talked about watching a match between The Miz and Daniel Bryan and not being able to watch it. Woods did go on to say that working on other projects, such as managing his YouTube channel, starting a podcast and hosting has helped fill the void left by not wrestling.

“I think a lot of people believe that those in certain forms of entertainment, whether they’d be in pro wrestling, singing, acting, dancing and you’re in a position where you do well for yourself, achieving your dreams and goals and people think, ‘They’re on TV! Screw them, they’re fine.’ Obviously, I’m doing okay life-wise. I can pay my bills, I can take care of my family, I can put food on the table. The thing that got me to that point is what I can’t do right now. I can’t wrestle and that hurts, it hurts here (points to head), know what I mean? There’s nothing I love more than going through the curtain, seeing all these people, whether they hate me or they love me, and felling that energy is a lot. In a weird way, and I don’t think people understand this if they don’t wrestle before, I can watch SmackDown, I can watch Raw, I can watch NXT, I can watch all this stuff, but there was one night, and I want to say it was The Miz vs. Daniel Bryan and they had a really good lockup in the beginning of the match and for some reason, that noise made me want to turn it off. I went into the basement, I tried to play games, but I couldn’t get stuff out of my head, how much I miss wrestling and so, I just need to power down for a few days, maybe two weeks… I’m just trying to stay busy,” Woods said.

You can check out the full interview at this link. If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Fightful for the transcription.