Former WCW star Buff Bagwell recently appeared as a guest on the “Steve Austin Show – Unleashed!” podcast and spoke about nearly getting paralyzed after taking a bad diving bulldog from Rick Steiner during an episode of WCW Thunder in 1998, his battle with drug addiction and the DUI that Lex Luger got that left him wheelchair-bound. Below are some of the highlights of the interview.
On thinking he was paralyzed during 1998 WCW Thunder match against Rick Steiner:
“At this point, I am 100% convinced, and that is a big, big statement, I’m convinced I’m paralyzed. I swear to God, my mind went, ‘you know what, you can do what Christopher Reeve is doing. You can go to schools.’ I really turned a negative situation into a positive situation in a matter of seconds.”
“We got [to the hospital] and they wheeled me out and I was all drooped over the wheelchair and as soon as I got into the waiting room, I popped up with a double bicep [pose]! And they were like, ‘oh my God! What happened? Why are you okay?’ and at that stage, they realized I had a bruised spinal cord.”
On his battle with drug addiction:
“I have severe sleep apnea. I did not know I had severe sleep apnea back in the day, so I would wake up and I felt horrible! So I would sedate to go to the gym. I would sedate to go to bed. I would sedate to get to the ring. I would sedate because I didn’t feel good. The word ‘sleep apnea,’ nobody knew what it was back then. It wasn’t a word yet, so once I got diagnosed with sleep apnea, then I was able to clean this stuff up. But back before I was able to clean it up, it created, long story short, sleep apnea created an unbelievable drug addict.”
On trying to stop Lex Luger from driving the night he got a DUI that left him wheelchair-bound:
“I really tried to help [Luger]. I said, ‘don’t leave. Please stay here.’ I said, ‘Judy will get us something to eat. Don’t worry about that.’ I said, ‘don’t do it’ and he just refused. And when he got in the car, and he smelled those hash browns, he took a couple bites of hash browns and there it was, nodded out and [went] out.”
“[I] just talked to him. [I] just invited him to the [The Good, The Bad & The Buff: The Marc Bagwell Journey] documentary coming up and really, just God bless him. He’s in a wheelchair. I mean, he [does not] even look like Lex and I’ve talked to him about this, I love him so much and I’m so proud of him. But still, it bothers me because he was, he is, ‘the Total Package’, Steve, and you know that. And for him not to be ‘the Total Package’ [anymore] bothers me and it upsets me.”
H/T For Transcribing: WrestlingINC.com
