Buff Bagwell Recalls His WCW Neck Injury, Talks Drug Issues

– Buff Bagwell appeared on the Steve Austin show and discussed a variety of topics. Check out the highlights:

On his neck injury at the hands of Rick Steiner on WCW Thunder in 1998: “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 drug issues: “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 his 2012 car accident: “I had a withdrawal seizure and that’s when I called 9-1-1, driving around, had a seizure, and drove around in my Jeep not knowing, and flipped my Jeep and had my wreck”.

On Lex Luger’s 2005 DUI: “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.”

On Luger’s condition: “[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.”