TNA Wrestling star Chris Bey appeared on Insight With Chris Van Vliet to discuss several topics, including how he suffered the neck injury last year.
Bey said, “I remember from the day being sore from Bound for Glory, crazy match. Once the adrenaline wore off at Bound for Glory, I was feeling it. So when I walked in that next day, I was like man, I hope I’m cutting a promo today. I said I did not feel like wrestling. As soon as I heard I was wrestling The Hardys I was like sweet, double-edged sword, because you’re wrestling the Hardys but then physically you don’t want to do it. But then I told myself and I told [Ace] Austin too. These guys used to do this six nights a week. We can do it. It’s no big deal. The match was going good. We had a lot of time, which was different from the first time we met those guys. Just team versus team. First time, we didn’t have a lot of time. This time we had more time. So we were all confident and comfortable with what we were doing. I’m in there with my best friend and two of my idols, it’s a night off essentially, and then a spot that you’ve done a million times up until this point goes wrong. As soon as it goes wrong, you don’t notice what’s wrong, you just know something isn’t right. I felt a jolt. It was a neck breaker. We missed each other, Matt and I, by an inch. I felt a jolt, and I felt a little bit of discomfort. Referee Daniel Spencer comes over and checks on me, ‘Chris, are you okay?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I think so, just roll me out the way’, because I needed help rolling out of the way. I didn’t realize how much help I needed. Austin said it didn’t look like I needed a lot. Looked like I helped too. I just felt like I wanted assistance rolling out of the way quick enough because I knew they had to do some more stuff. I didn’t want them to think that I was just selling and bumping on top of me, expecting me to move. I’ve had stingers before. I thought it might have just been a stinger. I was numb. It was a weird feeling that I can’t exactly explain, because I’ve never experienced it before. I just know it was kind of a numb feeling. I didn’t realize all of what was numb. I just felt a numbness. But because of the adrenaline and because of the perfectionist I am, I was thinking about the art we were creating and how my brush made a mark I didn’t want because the spot didn’t go perfect. So instead of thinking about how I felt, I was thinking about how to get back on track in the match. So once he helped roll me out of the way, I’m looking out of the side of my eye to see them do the next sequence and see if that goes right. It does. Crowd reacts and I’m like, okay, cool. It’s my turn to get back up and do my next spot. So mentally, I roll over and grab the ropes and sell around. Physically, I’m laying there. So Matt and Jeff come over to me and I was like, ‘Let’s just go to Swanton. Let’s just end this.’ Because I can’t get up. I’m already laying here. I’m like, let’s just go to the Swanton, which I’ve never had to cut stuff in a match before so my pride was hurt a little bit, but I just knew I couldn’t get up. I didn’t know why, though. So Jeff starts to climb the top rope, and as he’s climbing the top rope I’m thinking that I should be able to brace for this. So once again, mentally, I’m doing this motion. Physically, nothing’s happening, and I’m laying there doing this. So I’m yelling at the ref now, telling Jeff not to do the Swanton now as he’s already climbing the top rope. Thankfully, he doesn’t do the Swanton. He protects me, drops a leg drop but misses by a mile, protects me and he covers me. I’m just so apologetic. I’m like, ‘Guys, I’m so sorry I messed up. I messed up the finish of the match, I messed up. I’m sorry.’ And they’re like, ‘No, are you all right?’ Our ringside doctor comes over to me, he checks on me, he tries to get me to squeeze his hands, and at this point, my fingers are shaking a little bit but they’re not squeezing. I tell Austin, I’m like, ‘Bro, take my elbow pads off me now’, because my arms are hot. The adrenaline’s wearing off and my arms are like a million degrees. So I’m telling Austin to pull my elbow pads down, because I’m thinking my circulation is just too tight. In my mind, in this moment 30 minutes from now I’ll be in the locker room talking about how crazy whatever just happened was, and I’m going to shake this off. I’m gonna catch a flight tomorrow and head back home, go back to the gym and get back to a routine. I’m laying there, and the doctor asked me if I can wiggle my toes, once he asked me that I go I can’t feel my toes. I realized then, okay, this is more serious. I’ve never had a real injury. I’ve had minor injuries, but I’ve never had a real injury. I’ve never had to have a surgery. So I don’t know what breaking a neck feels like. I don’t know what breaking an arm feels like. I don’t know. So I’m just confused in this moment, and I’m embarrassed. It’s probably like 2,500 people in the room and it’s dead silent, so it’s awkward, it’s scary. Austin’s there. He’s by my side, Matt and Jeff’s there, the ringside doctor, Daniel Spencer our referee is here, everyone’s around me, I can’t move. I can’t look left or right other than with my eyeballs. They put me in a neck brace and they put me on the stretcher. I remember telling Austin, ‘Hey, how cool would it be if I could just raise my hand like Jeff right now on the stretcher.’ I was trying to do it mentally. It wasn’t happening. He laughs, you know, tears in his eyes, he laughs. I’m like, ‘Alright, go tell Jeff the joke. Now tell Matt the joke, I want them to laugh now, lighten the moment a little bit.’ So he scurries over and tells them the joke. They put me on the stretcher, and I start to cry a little bit. I was like, alright, suck it up man. They’re about to take you to the back locker room. I don’t want the boys to see you like this. They take me through the back and they put me in the ambulance, and I wanted them to get my phone so I could contact my people, let my people know what was up. So they find my phone for me. Trey Miguel, he goes and finds my phone for me. Called my girlfriend. I let her know. She had already kind of heard about it. It was already kind of making the rounds internally and maybe online too with fans, but I know internally it was making the rounds. I called one of my best friends in Vegas, Shogun Stan, I told him that I was hurt and it’s time for him to hold it down because I don’t know what what’s about to happen. They’re speculating that maybe it’s just a neck break. They don’t really know. They’re threatening to cut my boots off. They’re brand new boots. I’m like, ‘Don’t cut those boots. Show me a mirror. I’ll tell you how to take them off but don’t cut those boots. Those are brand new boots.’ They rush me to the hospital. Austin’s by my side, and I have them kind of going through my phone, calling people that are important to call. My mom, people who are reaching out, not too many people because it’s overwhelming. They’re shoving forms in my face asking me to sign stuff. I can’t move my hands. I knew it got really real when they rolled me over at some point and I saw my tights and my knee pads and my boots neatly stacked next to me uncut and I never felt them take any article of clothing off of me. I still didn’t know what to think. At this point, they told me they were gonna operate on my neck, and I’ve never broken anything like I said, so I don’t know if this how you’re supposed to feel when you break your neck. I don’t know if everyone who’s ever broken their neck has gone through what I’m going through in the moment. So Austin’s there and I’m trying to figure it out, I’m in so much pain at this point now. They tell me the surgeon is going to be there maybe 30 minutes, longest 30 minutes of my life, because I’m in so much pain, I just want to either end it or get under anesthesia so we can do this, because let’s get to it. What are we waiting for? The surgeon to get there. But what are we waiting for? I’m ready, and they put me under. Woke up the next day. It was day one.”
On what spot caused the injury:
“We have a tag team finisher that we don’t even have a name for. It’s a combination of Austin standing in the corner launching me into the cutter, because I’m famous for the cutter, I’ll roll out of the way. He’ll run and do his finish of the fold, which is like a super fancy modified blockbuster, the best one in the game. As he’s launching me for the cutter, Matt’s in the middle of the ring. He’s our target. Matt is going to counter by just catching me into a neckbreaker. We’ve done the spot before, not with Matt specifically, but with a couple other people and it’s gone well, it’s not a difficult spot, per se. But pro wrestling, everything we do is dangerous, and everything we do is an inch away from a catastrophe happening. It was one of those things where it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t his fault. It was just what happened in the moment. We missed each other by an inch, and it was life-changing.”
On his surgery and being told about his chances of walking again:
“So they went in the front and they fused my C6 to my C7 which healed up pretty nicely. It was 19 staples across the front, which once I was finally able to move my hands a lot I was touching the staples a lot because couldn’t believe I had staples in my neck. What a weird feeling. They went in the back and they fused my C6 to my T1 because the damage that happened wasn’t just a neck break. It was also damage to my spinal cord, which is why I became paralyzed. So a lot of people don’t experience that exact thing, but people have their own stories, their own journeys. It’s difficult for everybody. It’s not a comparison. They x-rayed me before the surgery, and I do remember them showing me what my neck was looking like. I believe there was a fragment I was pushing into my spinal cord, and that was one of the issues. Afterwards the conversation was more so about what they thought recovery looked like, what it typically is in this scenario, and what they anticipated would be my result. They say you see your most results in recovery, like the quickest results in around three to six months. In about a year to 18 months is where you’ll see where you’ll be. For me, they were predicting about a 10 to 25% chance of walking again.”
On when he realized he could walk again:
“My fingers and hands started to move upward. My arms, from the elbows [Around what point?] Probably about a couple days and a weekend [after surgery]. Every day they would come in and monitor me and check for the first couple weeks where my feeling and sensation goes. So they’d start up here and they move down and go, ‘Does it feel normal here? Does it feel numb?’ And whatever I would say that it feels normal when it changes to numb, they’d mark it, they would keep track of that, and it slowly started to move but I didn’t have a lot of dexterity. I didn’t have that. So we had to work on all of those things. We had to work on trying to grip things. My girlfriend would have to text everybody back for me, or hold my drink for me while I drank, or feed me. I couldn’t grip things. I couldn’t move those joints, but I would do the little exercises they would teach me in the room at first, just to try to get some sort of strength back in my fingers. My fine motor skills are still not very good with my hands. It took a lot of therapy, a lot of mental will, lot of days where I wasn’t better than the day before. So it sucked. You know, timing, a lot of my walking ability or standing ability, and trying to make my walking look as natural as possible. So I had probably only been up on my feet without assistance for three weeks at that point when I posted the video. So those three weeks were mostly me trying to make it look as normal as possible and not too shaky, so that if I did decide to post it I wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
