Former WWE star Ridge Holland has spoken about the emotional fallout from the 2022 accident that left Big E with a broken neck. Holland revealed that he and his family received death threats after the incident.
The accident happened during the March 11, 2022 episode of WWE SmackDown. Holland delivered an overhead belly-to-belly suplex to Big E outside the ring, but the move went wrong. Big E landed badly and fractured his C1 and C6 vertebrae in his neck. Thankfully, he avoided spinal cord damage, but the injury ended his in-ring wrestling career.
Ridge Holland reflects on the backlash he faced following a controversial WWE incident
Speaking on Wrestling Life with Ben Veal, Holland admitted that the moment completely changed his life and career. “That was the one thing that pretty much changed everything,” he said.
But even while discussing his own struggles, Holland made it clear that Big E’s health was always the most important thing to him.
“I’ll always preface it by saying that, like, the main thing is that Big E was okay that night. As much as I’m going to talk about how it affected me, the main outcome of the thing is that Big E is okay and he’s healthy. He’s happy. And he’s doing good stuff obviously behind the scenes with WWE,” Holland said.
However, Ridge Holland admitted the accident badly hurt his standing in WWE. He was immediately labeled as an unsafe wrestler, and that reputation has stayed with him ever since. The backlash also damaged his confidence inside the ring. According to Holland, the criticism soon became much more serious than just online comments.
“All the social media fallout, and like, I’ve mentioned before, death threats and just the impact it had on my confidence. I didn’t want to go in the ring,” Holland revealed.
He described the entire period as a “black cloud” that followed him through the rest of his WWE career.
When he was further asked how the death threats affected him and his family, Holland replied, “Yeah, tough. Like kids, like people threatening if they were going to see me, they were going to end me. And I mail to my house. Yeah, it was rough. Obviously when I’ve got a wife and two young kids, it’s not something that you ever want to, you know, something to turn up on your doorstep. But the total, kind of like the other side of it is, in person, I’ve never had a bad fan experience.”
Holland also shared a story involving Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard that left him disappointed. He revealed that WWE planned for him to apologize live on SmackDown one week after the accident. However, the segment was canceled seconds before he was supposed to go on air.
The situation changed how Ridge Holland viewed WWE management.
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