TUCSON, Ariz. – Aug. 25, 2003 – Nobody knows better than Triple H that the show must go on.
Last night at SummerSlam, the Game competed in the Elimination Chamber, and retained the World Heavyweight Championship, in spite of the fact that he has been nursing two torn muscles in his groin area -- a torn adductor muscle, and a partially torn lower abdominal – since late July.
“When I first did it, I looked like Ozzy (Osbourne),” Triple H said. “I was all hunched over, and I shuffled along because I couldn’t separate my legs fully to take full strides when I walked. I couldn’t stand up totally straight because of the tear in my lower ab. It’s gotten better now. If you see me walk or move around, it looks like nothing’s wrong with me. But if I turn the wrong way or pull to the side, I feel it all in my groin and lower abs. It’s not a pleasant thing.”
SummerSlam was not the first time that the Game competed in spite of an injury. Another recent example is last December, when he battled Shawn Michaels in a best-of-three falls match despite a massive hematoma (solid ball of blood) in his quadriceps.
The champion’s most recent injury occurred after the cameras stopped rolling on the July 28 episode of RAW from Colorado Springs. The Game explained what happened: “I had a non-televised match with Goldberg after RAW was over. During that match, Goldberg pushed me off, and when I landed, something popped in my hip. I thought at first I’d dislocated my hip a little bit. But when I rolled out of the ring and started to move it around, I could feel it in my groin. So I pulled my groin a little – it was bad, but not real bad. I shook it off and got back in the ring. When I locked up with Bill, and the impact of the lockup happened, something just popped real bad right in my groin. It took my breath away. I had to take all the weight off my leg. I rolled out of the ring, and that was the end of that.”
The Game smirks and says that one of the effects of the injury was severe swelling and discoloration in his groin area. “For about two weeks, it felt like I had constantly been kicked in the nuts,” one of which, he added, “swelled up to the size of a kiwi.”
Triple H said his current physical setback would not require surgery. “It’s just a time thing,” he said. “It’s just trying to give it time to heal.” How much time is unknown.
“If you talk to anybody who’s had a severe groin pull or groin problems, like Undertaker, for example, they can be haunting injuries,” he said. “Just when you think they’ve gone away, you do one little movement, and – bam! -- you get it back again. They can be a pain in the ass.
“One of the doctors that I go to for rehab had a football player who had (groin problems) for eight months. It’s one of those things, you can’t really make a determination of how quickly it will be. You just have to go, and when you start to feel better, try to work on it, and hope you don’t tweak it again.”
The champion has been doing all that he can, which is not much, to accelerate the recovery process – ice, heat, ultrasound, electric stimulation, massage therapy, light stretching. Last night, to try to prevent further damage, he wore a specialized pair of protective shorts under his tights. “It’s like a second skin,” he said. “It’s real, real tight. .. And it has a special material inside that sticks to your skin.”
He added, “The last thing I wanted to do was go in there and tear it further. The last thing I wanted to do was make it worse in the match, and then struggle through September.”
The Game believes he succeeded in not causing any further damage.
“I didn’t do that much, but it’s sore today,” he said. “I don’t think I made it any worse as far as tearing anything else or injuring anything. I think it’s just sore. Hopefully, in a few more weeks, I’ll be good. But again, you can’t tell.”