Buff Bagwell On Returning As a Heel After Broken Neck, Says His Parents Weren’t Happy About It

Buff Bagwell made his return from a broken neck in 1998 in WCW and went heel, and he recently discussed the decisions behind that. Bagwell did a live Q&A with Eric Bischoff on AdFreeShows and during the dicussion he talked about his return as a heel, what he wishes would have been done differently and more. You can see some highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On returning from the injury as a heel: “My parents were flipped over it because I was going to be a bad guy. My friends and family cried about it … It could’ve been a great babyface run coming out of the gate with that. But the nWo thing, it was meant to do exactly what everybody thought was going to happen, and do the opposite. And that’s where Eric succeeded with WCW and that’s why we did so great at it. It was just the way to do it, going the other way.”

On how he thinks it could have been done better: “The only thing that I wish we would’ve done, that I felt that WCW was short on, was we didn’t do any kind of video angle of it. I remember having the talk with Eric about it at the hospital, and during that time, that wasn’t cool. Eric was right. He was like ‘Mark, that’s bad karma man. I don’t think we should do that.’ So we backed off. And then not long after that, Triple H tore his quad, and you would’ve thought that Jesus Christ came back. I broke my neck and made it back in ten months.”