Rich Swann on How Severe His Injuries Were Ahead of His Return, How He Overcame It

– During an interview on Busted Open Radio, Impact Wrestling talent Rich Swann discussed the devastating injuries he had to overcome ahead of his recent return to the ring. Swann will challenge Eric Young for the Impact World title later tonight at Bound for Glory 2020. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Rich Swann on the various injuries he was dealing with: “So, after I broke everything, what was it? My ankle, my foot, my fibula, my L5, L6. After taking all that, I got to the car with one of my buddies, and then, we drove to Houston, because we had two more shows before then and I waited. I was like, ‘Aw man, hopefully, this is just a bad sprain’. Even though I saw my foot just turned sideways and it was hanging. I waited a couple of days and finally, I went to the hospital in Dallas on that Sunday and the doctor was saying once they gave me the X-Ray, oh man, you’re definitely going to need surgery, but the thing was, they weren’t doing anything on that Sunday. They weren’t doing any surgeries really, just because of the COVID-19 and everything.”

Rich Swann on finding out his fibula was broken: “It just really started to take its head and so, I get back home a week later to Orlando and I finally get that surgery and also, as they’re giving me the X-Ray, the MRI, my back was fractured as well. So, as I’m getting this, they’re telling me, ‘Your fibula’s broken and the bone just poking right out the skin. It was such a clean break. It was almost a compound fracture, almost went through the skin. With the foot and everything, the right side of my ankle was lodged up into my shin, the lower part of my shin. My left side of my ankle was lodged up into my calf. The top of my foot was peeled off. It was horrible.”

On if he had doubts about returning to the ring with all the injures: “Oh yeah, for sure. Once I started going after the surgery to the doctor and they saw how severe it was and I showed them some of the videos of my work and some of the matches, how I would perform and he looked at me and he said, ‘Oh, fun. You think you’re going to be doing this, man, you have another thing coming’ and then, he started to get a little bit more serious. He was like, ‘You might have to think about another profession. You might not be walking right. You might literally have a limp for the rest of your life’ and to hear that, it was like, ‘Man, I go from being told that I might not be able to make it in this industry, in this land of giants to doing it and now, it’s all being taken away just from one little simple move.”

Swann on how he overcame the trauma: “So, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said I told people that I could do it before and I’m going to do it again. So, I busted my a– as hard as I could. Did above and beyond what the physical limits were supposed to be to do the physical therapy and it worked out. It paid off and the doctor, he told me and he was like, ‘Wow, I just want to know what you’ve been doing kid because it looks like you’re going to be able to go.'”