Ember Moon Discusses Returning To NXT After Career-Threatening Injury

Ember Moon returned to NXT and to pro-wrestling at TakeOver 31 last weekend. She made her in-ring return on this week’s edition of NXT on Wednesday night as well. Moon spoke with SI.com recently about returning to NXT and overcoming a career-threatening injury.

“When learned I was headed to NXT, the whole motorcycle package was an idea I had after watching an action movie called Hardcore Henry,” Moon said. “The NXT creative team is absolutely amazing, and they got this massive set for me. I wanted elements of The Masked Singer so we could have clues to keep people guessing. And they were like, ‘Let’s do it!’ There is a video game I play, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, where there are these two dueling voices and you have to listen closely, and we did something similar for the surprise, which was absolutely amazing.”

Moon went nearly 13 months between matches. Her last match before returning on Wednesday night was a loss to Lacey Evans on September 23rd, 2019. She was injured during a segment on Smackdown last year where she was chasing after then-24/7 champion Carmella. The injury turned out to be more serious than expected.

“I went to an amazing doctor in the Dallas area, and he was confident that there would barely even be a scar. Coming out of surgery, he said to me, ‘The good news is your Achilles is fixed. The bad news is that it was completely off, it ripped off the bone.’ Instead of the very tiny scar, they had to slice the entire back of my foot open to surgically repair it.”

Moon appeared on WWE Backstage in May and noted that her injury was career-threatening.

“I’m coming back from the hardest injury and I might not have a chance to redeem myself of all the things I wanted to do and all the things I want to do in my future. It’s so hard to think back in regret when I try to look forward.”