In a recent interview with James Romero of WSI | Wrestling Shoot Interviews, former WWE, ECW and TNA Wrestling star Stevie Richards provided an update on his current health, tests revealing that he had a spinal infection, his recovery process and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On when Stevie first started to experience health issues: “For months, I was just thinking, oh my back’s starting to hit that wall, maybe I’m going to need surgery, maybe I’m going to need a nerve block, whatever fix I could have at this point to keep going. Then, in the end of January on a Sunday morning, I had one of my best workouts ever, thought I was pulling through, like one of those bouts where your lower back keeps biting you, but from 9am when I got home and I thought okay, that was a good workout, to Noon, I was completely stuck in my chair and it was just a mystery, like my back has locked out, but not to the point where my legs are almost useless, not paralyzed, not numb, but it hurt so bad I couldn’t put pressure on my legs, because it would shoot up into my back, so my wife, literally from 9am when I got home and then, at noon, had me in a walker, I went right to a walker, I’m moving around and it’s just now fear, the early set of fears settling in like, well I’ve never experienced pain like this.”
On testing that revealed that his spine was infected: “So, I’m in a wheelchair and then, Mayo Clinic finally got eyes on me, thank God, finally got eyes on me and once they saw me, I got admitted. They started doing tests, they did a spine biopsy, which by the way, because of the infection, none of the twilight type of anesthesia worked, I felt every bit of them hammering a needle into my spot, I’m telling you, I was just like laying there and he kept apologizing and I just hear that it sounded like a railroad spike going into my back.”
On where he is at with his recovery process: “Besides the CT scan, I’m officially out of the woods, but I also have to be very careful, because of the effects, so the effects from the spine infection have still lowered my immunity, I’m down about 35 pounds still, which I wanted to lean out, but I didn’t want to do it that way, but I’m down. I was 215lbs and I dropped to 180lbs, and now I’m around 180 to 180.5lbs, but my workouts, I have to say thank God, have been outside of hip hinging movements and putting any kind of pressure, axial pressure on my neck or my spine. I’m pretty much able to do just about everything. Now, what I’ve done James, because I’m really a fitness enthusiast and that’s why my fitness brand, I started my fitness journey all over again and I’m still technically, even after about two months, I’m cardio, like 90% isometrics, some suspension, body weight training and maybe a little bit of cable work, but isometrics have been.”
The interview is available in full at this link.
