Posted on 1/20/126 by Colin Vassallo
Buff Bagwell sat down with Chris Van Vliet at the DDP Yoga
Performance Center in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss what led
to his leg needing to be amputated and why he let Maven
document the surgery, his battles with addiction and what
led to him getting sober, possibly competing in one more
match, how DDP helped him turn his life around, having one
of the best physiques in wrestling, inventing the
Blockbuster, and more!
For people who don’t know what happened with your leg, that
car accident was kind of what started this?
“Absolutely. So in 2020, I had a car wreck where I was under
the influence of pills and alcohol, and I drove through a
bus station, it’s a bus station bathroom, men’s and women’s
and nobody was in it, thank God. In that car wreck, my right
knee cap exploded. So with it exploding, 40 surgeries over
the next 3 or 4 years trying to fix it. Infections in and
out. Knee replacement, I think it was 41 surgeries total.
Then I was just going to deal with this leg that didn’t bend
anymore, and it got infected again. And the doctor goes,
‘Let’s cut it off.’ And I went, ‘Whoa, wait a minute,
brother, we did 40 something surgeries. Let’s try to fix it
one more time. I can’t just cut my leg off.’ So I went to
that appointment to see what it was like to save my leg. In
that appointment is where I stopped the doctor, as he was
explaining, he was talking about pulling a skin graft off of
this shoulder to close it up. I said, Whoa, what? So it was
so devastating what I was hearing. I said, ‘What’s the
percentages of all that working?’ And he said, about 20%. I
said, ‘Let’s cut it off.’”
Were you able to come to peace with that decision?
“No, not at all. I was devastated. I did not, and you cannot
see this. I tried to see it, but I just don’t think you have
the eyes to see this part of it. The truth is, I should have
done this two years earlier. I really believe if it would
have been proposed to me two years ago, I would have thought
they were crazy. I’d have said no, no, no, like I did this
time. But if I would have done it, I’d have been two years
ahead. So this has been with my situation of the leg I had,
this is unbelievably good what happened to me, but you just
don’t see that when you’re going through it.”
I’ve heard you say you want to wrestle again?
“I know I could wrestle again, another match or two, but if
I can’t do it, I’m not going to do it. And I’m not sure
that’s possible. I don’t want to be ugly. If it’s ugly at
all, I’m not going to do it. So, for example, this $135,000
leg. Because of this, there’s no way to make [using the
ring] steps look good. So that will be the first thing you
got to conquer, is getting in [the ring] or sliding in and
getting up fast. But again, if I can’t do those things
without them being I’m not going to do it, but I think I
can. I think I can do it where it’s not ugly. I just don’t
know yet, so we’re definitely going to, in the next couple
of months, I’m going to get in the ring and just see what I
can do. But I really do think no matter what I will do one
match just because that’s one of my goals.”
It seems like you’ve been able to now make the distinction
between Marcus and Buff, and for a long time, you were just
Buff:
“That’s a perfect, perfect analogy. It’s funny you say that
I remember the boys, Disco Inferno in particular, we would
be talking, and he’d be like, ‘Is that Buff or is that
Marcus?’ We would laugh and joke about it because it was
funny. After all, back then, there was a Buff and a Marcus,
and then somewhere in there, those lines get cloudy, they
get not so clear. That happens, you live the gimmick. I
didn’t think I was doing that, but obviously I was, but I do
believe that comes with also the alcohol and the pills just
really clouded it up. It’s not just, you know, Macho Man
lived his character. I could care less about living my
character. I just believe that your character ain’t far from
who you are anyway. Buff, when you saw Marcus Alexander
Bagwell in the wrestling ring, Buff’s there too. I’m just a
babyface. I’m a good guy. But when you’re Buff, you got to
turn it up. It’s just turned up a little. But I think that
gets confused even more with alcohol and pills.”