Mike Rallis Recalls Near-Miss Neck Injury During Elimination Chamber 2022 Match With Drew McIntyre

Mike Rallis, best known to WWE fans as Madcap Moss and later Riddick Moss, has opened up about a frightening moment at Elimination Chamber 2022 when a botched spot with Drew McIntyre left him dangerously close to a serious neck injury.

The incident occurred when McIntyre hit Rallis with a reverse Alabama Slam. Rallis inadvertently tucked his chin while taking the move, causing him to land directly on the top of his head. Referee Jessika Carr immediately stopped to check on him, and the concern from the back was evident — Carr was asked to check on Rallis multiple times before the match was allowed to continue.

Speaking on the O’Hara & Friends Wrestling podcast, Rallis recalled the chaos of the moment: “It was towards the end of the match, I knew the move didn’t go right but I felt fine. Right away the ref, Jess, came to check on me, she was like ‘Are you ok?’ I was like ‘Yeah, yeah I’m fine.’ And then she went back, talked to the back and said ‘Yeah, he says he’s ok,’ and I saw her go ‘Are you sure?’ They were like ‘Check him a few times.'” His then tag partner Baron Corbin, watching from ringside, was reportedly bracing to finish the match alone, convinced something had gone badly wrong.

Rallis’ wife, Tenille Dashwood — herself a former WWE performer — was also on the podcast and noted that adrenaline likely masked how serious the situation could have been. It wasn’t until Rallis returned to the gorilla position and was shown a high-definition frame-by-frame replay that the severity of the landing truly hit him. Commentator Corey Graves had reportedly remarked on air that he didn’t know how Rallis was still on his feet — a comment Rallis only caught up with afterward. He ultimately went to get his neck checked out, and fortunately no structural damage was found.

Despite the positive outcome, Rallis was keen to use the story as a cautionary one rather than a badge of honor: “I got lucky. It ended up being a reputational boost for me. But really, anytime I talk about it I want to stress, if I was hurt, it wouldn’t have been cool or smart of me to go on and keep performing. If you do have a concussion, if you do have a neck injury where something isn’t feeling right, whether it’s sport or wrestling, you can always work around that injury, it’s not worth it.”

Rallis and Dashwood were both released from WWE in September 2023 and have made only sporadic independent appearances since. The willingness to revisit a moment that could have ended his career — and turn it into an honest public service message — speaks well of where Rallis’s head is at now that he’s on the outside looking in.