“I was chopping up some vegetables to go in the slaw we were serving with one of our dishes,” Matt tells WHO.
“I was nearly finished when I slipped on the bench as I was cutting and it took the corner of my thumb off.”
Despite the excruciating pain, the NSW contestant reveals his first instinct was to hide it.
"I remember my first thought was — can I hide my clumsiness from Australia?," he says.
Despite his best efforts, he couldn't hide the blood from teammate Luke , who called the nurse over.
Matt reveals it all went downhill from there.
"The nurse had a look and made a comment or two that made me feel a bit crook," he says.
"I started to feel sick because she was bandaging it up and the feeling on the wound was just gross."
Luke then fainted for the first time in his life.
While he admits that he's normally a 'big girl' when it comes to blood, he believes the stress of the situation pushed him over the edge.
"We were under the pump and moving and all of a sudden, I was having a little nap," he laughs.
After he woke up, Matt was determined to finish the challenge.
While he reveals that the adrenaline kept him going, he was sent to the hospital shortly afterwards.
"They cleaned it out, bandaged it up and I had to go back once or twice to make sure I didn’t have nerve damage," he tells.
He reveals it was a mental challenge, as well as a physical one, to return to the show.
"Those knives are razor sharp, it was a mental thing getting back into the kitchen," he says.
He says his injury also made it difficult to hold food while chopping.
Luckily, Matt had the support of his teammate Luke as well as the other contestants to keep him going.
"I had a few nurses," he laughs.
"Lisa and Lyn both turned nurse slash mum, they were really helpful."
