Jake Hager walked away from his Power Slap knockout with a clean bill of health and a hard question rattling around his head.
The former WWE and AEW star was knocked out cold in the third round by Amanpreet Singh, the ex-TNA star known as Mahabali Shera, at Power Slap 21 on July 10. Hager is now serving a mandatory 45-day medical suspension. Speaking on the Off the Rails podcast, he said he came through it clean but wasn’t about to pretend it was nothing.
I didn’t have any symptoms from this last fight, honestly. Like, this is where I got hit. Can’t even really tell. I feel like my body will tell me. And I feel like that I’m only going to get stronger as I do it, like with more experience. But, like I said before, it was a hard knockout.
A second one, he admits, would change the conversation.
And so, if, like, another one should happen, it won’t, but if it should, you would really, I would really have to ask myself, like, ‘Hey, what are we doing here?’ type deal because, like, your chin is like your bump card.
That comparison ran through everything he said. Both careers, in his eyes, run on a meter that only counts down.
You only have so many bumps in pro wrestling. You have only so many hits in, in pro fighting. And so, you know, you just have to be honest with yourself.
It’s also why he’s pushing hard while the window is open.
Like, attack the opportunity, get what you can out of it. Like, know that this isn’t going to be around forever. Know that people are going to not know your name in a couple years. And so, you got to, like, go at this with all you can. And let see where the chips fall, I guess.
Hager signed with Dana White’s slap-fighting promotion earlier this year and won his debut during WrestleMania 42 weekend before dropping the Shera fight, leaving him 1-1 in the league.
Power Slap’s next dates are a July 30 card in Belgrade, Serbia, streaming free on YouTube, and a September 17 show in Texas. Hager ruled himself out of the first one.
Nope, I’m not doing that one. I would love to go to Serbia sometime. I hear it’s very beautiful, but, uh, I’m still on medical suspension, like 45 days. So, we’ll be back soon.
A former WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Hager went 3-0 with one no contest during his Bellator MMA run before moving into the slap format.
