Jelly Roll reveals injury he suffered in first week of WWE training
In his WWE training, it didn’t take Jelly Roll long to find out how real pro wrestling can be.
The country music star is set to make his WWE in-ring debut this Saturday when he teams up with Randy Orton against Logan Paul & Drew McIntyre at the first night of SummerSlam. To promote the show, he and Orton were guests on ESPN’s Get Up this morning. Jelly Roll revealed that he suffered a broken pinky finger during the first week of his wrestling training.
“The physicality,” Jelly Roll responded when asked what the toughest part of training has been. “Listen man, that wrestling’s fake stuff has got to go out the door. There’s no fake way to land on a piece of plywood in front of 60,000 people, you know what I mean? There’s no fake way to go over a cable rope in front of 65,000 people, man. I broke my pinky week one of training by accident. That thing, it’s a constant collision, dude.”
Calling himself a “real fan” of wrestling, Jelly Roll expressed a huge amount of respect for everything wrestlers put their bodies through.
“These men and women put their body through hell. And I knew it, and I think as a fan my whole life — and I’m a real fan, that’s how I ended up here — but I really understand it now that I’ve went in there,” he said. “I gave it everything I had for a couple of months. I dedicated my whole life to it. And I still can’t crack half of the code, a quarter of the code that actually is this thing. But it’s been awesome. It taught me a lot about myself.”
Orton called Jelly Roll an “amazing human being” and praised him for how hard he’s worked.
“He’s working as hard as anyone — if not harder — than anyone that I’ve ever seen come into our world,” Orton said.
Jelly Roll says he’s been at the WWE Performance Center every day for the past few weeks training for his debut.
The 40-year-old musician has become a popular figure in part because of his inspirational life story that includes a 200-pound weight loss journey and overcoming a difficult past where he sold drugs and spent time in jail.
SummerSlam is being held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey this Saturday and Sunday. Each night has a start time of 6 p.m. Eastern, streaming live on Peacock in the United States and Netflix elsewhere.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.