During his latest podcast, former WCW and Impact Wrestling star Konnan talked his recent hospitalization and how close he came to dying:
“So let me tell you what happened. I f*cking was in the hospital, I wake up, there’s six doctors in front of me. An Nephrologist, a Cardiologist, an Infectious Disease doctor and they’re very, very mad. They’re angry with me because I’m not taking my pills, I’m being very rude, I’m not listening to instructions. This is in the hospital.
[I wasn’t listening to them] because I didn’t want to believe it was as bad as they were telling me. I didn’t wanna hear bad news. Now the bad news mean I can’t work, I can’t make money, as if that’s everything in life which it isn’t and so they’re f*cking talking to me and one guy just f*cking gives me a kick right in the nuts. He goes, ‘Well Mr. Ashenoff, since you don’t seem to understand the gravity of this situation, I’m gonna put it to you in black and white. There’s a very good chance, and when I mean very good chance, over 60 percent that your heart is going to stop. What would you like us to do with that heart?’ The other guy goes — I just was in shock. The other guy goes, ‘Obviously, that didn’t seem to illicit a response out of you.’ Well of course it didn’t motherf*cker. I’m f*cking in shock. ‘Your kidneys are failing. What would you like us to do with that? Donate it to science?’ They gave us like three or four f*cking things. Then another guy walks in, a Chaplain and you know I hate religion, and the motherf*cker wanted to pray with me. I almost threw him out the window but that’s real sh*t bro, and you survey your life and you go, ‘Okay, so what have I done?’ Had a lot of fun, took a lot of drugs, traveled the world, told a lot of people to go get f*cked. But I did it my way, you know what I’m saying? And at the end of the day, I am not any way, shape or form going to in any way, shape or form cow toe, bend to, kiss ass, just because people in this industry have money and everybody’s trying to get as much money as they can and they don’t wanna tell them the truth. Some of the conversations that I had with my closest friends were, ‘How did you put up with my bullsh*t for so long?’ And one of the things they always told me is, ‘No matter what, at least you kept it real with us.’”
“I was very, very, very — and I’m not a dramatic guy. I’m not, ‘Oh! Look at how much I work, look at how sick I am. Thank you to everybody.’ That’s just not me. It doesn’t make me better than anybody, doesn’t make me smarter than anybody. It’s just who I am, and at the end of the day bro, I just wanna live whatever I have left. If it’s one day, two days, what does it make a difference if at my funeral if five guys are there or 300 guys are there, I’m dead, you know? What did I do while I was here? What did I help do? My inner being is a helpful person like you Disco [Inferno]. You like to help people, so do I. There’s no way I would’ve helped so many guys that aren’t my family members if there wasn’t a part of me that likes to help people, and so, but what are you gonna be known for? For a guy that just went around bullsh*tting everybody and f*cking — you know what I’m saying? I mean at the end of the day, I just had kind of like an awakening and that’s all there is to it and I’m very — let me tell you one thing: I am fortunate — and I do not overdramatize this — to be alive.”
(quotes courtesy of PostWrestling.com)
