Tommy Dreamer Recalls Being Scared For His Life Following Recent Injury

As the old adage goes, 'wrestling isn’t ballet’, with the risk of injury or even death high every time you step between the ropes.

One wrestler who has suffered various injuries throughout his career is Tommy Dreamer, but the ‘Innovator of Violence’ revealed on a recent episode of Busted Open Radio how a recent injury had him scared for his life:

"Honestly, it was the first time in my entire career I was actually scared for my life and my health,” said Dreamer. “Freak accident and it was touched upon a little bit and I have the picture of it. When I got spine-busted on the trashcan, normally, like, I don't know if it's because I'm fatter. I landed in the middle and I crushed it, but the top coil of the trash can, as soon as I hit. I'm like, 'Whoa, something's wrong', and I see I'm stuck, and I have gotten stuck in them before, but it's a different type of stuck. I'm trying to move and I see something is sticking out of my gear, my pants, and I see it's this metal. I was like, 'Oh my God. This is in my body.’

"The top layer broke and it's just steel. People don't realise that every time you get hit with a trash can, those edges become like razors, but the top is a hard piece of steel. I don't know how I did not get impaled through my kidneys and I'm like, 'Holy s***. This is stuck in me.' As I go to grab it, Sheldon Jean ripped it out. Now when you're impaled, you're supposed to leave the object in and go to the hospital. So the moment I do it, I check, and there's a s***load of blood, but my outfit, I wear underwear, I wear my pants. I also, in my shirt I have Under Armour, and my shirt, it's all absorbing all this blood. I'm like, 'All right. I can continue.' As I continue going forward, it's still bleeding a lot, and you can see me laying on the floor, and then they cut it, but people are checking on me, and I'm like, 'I can finish. I can finish', because there was no blood in the back.

"So I have by the grace of God, however I hit it, the wire or this steel rod, went to the side, kind of went through my love handle, and then cut towards my leg and it just severed it, as opposed to going through me. I mean, I can't even say inches, of, and I mean, I was gushing blood when I went to the back and had to pull off my gear. It was like holy crap, and I was at the show where X-Pac, to say it nicely, tore his taint, and when he pulled off his pants, it was disgusting. It was an insane amount of blood. So for me, because it was like I got stabbed, but it was different, and I had been punctured before. I've been punctured a lot of times with thumbtacks or punctured in barbed wire, but this thing just went straight through."

Dreamer suffered the injury during a tag team Memphis Street Fight with Heath against Kenny King and Sheldon Jean on a recent episode of IMPACT Wrestling TV. Dreamer would continue explaining the nature of his injury, and how ringside fans were concerned:

"Then the next day, I found the garbage can and it was two sides and just exploded and went straight up. Never has that happened to me, and unfortunately, I have been put in a lot of garbage cans or chairs. I mean, I once was almost impaled with a chair leg when a chair broke, but this came so close to just, I would have bled out and, happy the match continued. They didn't touch upon it a lot on commentary because you couldn't see the amount of blood. The fans saw it and they were like, 'Tommy, are you okay?' I remember like, I'm talking to officials. I'm like, 'I'm fine. I'm just stabbed. I've been stabbed before', and I go, 'But it's not through. It's not through', so I continued the match.

"I will post a picture and I'll tag Busted Open of what actually happened but never have I been scared before and you're talking about someone who you know, been on fire, through barbed wire, I was choked with an electric cord to all the electricity of a building on top of the building in the scaffold match, but this was the first time where I was like, 'This is bad. This is bad', and I couldn't get to the injury because the match was continuing to happen, but it was a scary aftermath.

"I'm still alive. Again, grace of God, how this metal, because I guess I was rotating, it didn't go directly in, and it would have punctured my kidneys and went straight from my kidneys out the other side just how it was because of how the cut, you know, if ever, like, forensics, 'Well, the bullet went in here and exited here.' Just very, very random and weird how it was and for Sheldon Jean ripping it out, didn't make matters better,” said Dreamer.

H/T: WrestlingNews.co