Chris Sabin Exclusive Interview: Returning To IMPACT Wrestling, Motor City Machine Guns & More

With all the injuries you've suffered over the course of your career, was there ever a point in the last few years you considered quitting all together and taking up another role of the wrestling business behind the scenes or was getting back in the ring always your end goal no matter what?

Sabin: Yeah, it crossed my mind, for sure. There were instances where I was like, “My career could be over, really.” I could step back in the ring and something could happen, but you always sort of have that in the back of your mind with wrestling being such a dangerous activity. As far as my effort and what I did, everything I did as far as physical therapy and getting back in the ring and watching wrestling and all that, all my motivation and energy was put toward coming back at the highest level I could in being a wrestler.

Like I said, even with that, you have moments where you get down and think to yourself, “Man, a bad day at training or you pull something or tweak something, I don't know if this is in the books for me. Is this supposed to happen?” You have to take yourself out of that and keep a positive mindset and keep your efforts toward what you really want to do and that's what I really want to do was wrestle.

Does it get more and more difficult with each injury to return, or are you more confident that you can come back knowing you've done it before?

Sabin: I think it gets a little more difficult with each injury. The second it happened, it was pretty much right after I came back from the first injury, so that one was a lot more devastating than the one that happened last year. But still, having a second surgery on the knee, you never know. You don't have control over it, but at the same time, you do have control over it. You can train and try to get your knee as strong as possible, but it's always something strange that you have no control over that injures you, so it's something simple like that.

I think this time, the third time around, I knew what I was getting into, but I also did something I didn't do during the first surgeries which is what's called pre-hab. That's where I was doing physical therapy before I had the surgery and they actually had physical therapy months before I had my surgery. I think that helped a lot. I feel like I recovered a lot better and I didn't lose as much muscle or anything after the surgery.