Various: William Regal on Past Health Issues, Jay Briscoe Apologizes for Past Homophobic Tweets, Indies

AEW

Mar 16, 2022

William Regal Comments on His Past Serious Health Issues

A recent episode of the Talk Is Jericho podcast had William Regal as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Regal going into details about the serious health issues he dealt with in the past, including one where doctors told him he only had around 24 hours left to live.

“I went home two weeks before Christmas (2018). The last time my family was all together was 2018 for Christmas and I was in the hospital for eight weeks. I was given 24 hours to live. They were going to cut my leg off. This was January 4, 2019. I insisted on going home for Christmas. I had a hell of a year, 2018. Since 1998, I had pericarditis — an inflammation of the sac around the heart — it scars that sac. Your heart can beat, but that sac can lockdown. I might not have looked like it, but I trained as hard as I did and taking bumps, it kept that from locking down and going solid, the skin around your heart. I went to India, got really sick, and was out for a year. I had bouts on and off …
November, they send me for a scan. My legs are swelling, they do a scan of my abdomen. Fortunately, for me, there is a cardiologist in the room and this lady saved my life. She went, ‘Hang on a minute, there is something above that that doesn’t look right.’ They couldn’t scan there, this is Friday, because I’ve already been injected, so they need to do another scan because of the fluid. I go back Monday for a scan I never had before. I went home, within an hour of me being in the house, my cardiologist called going, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ ‘Why?’ ‘We should have thought of this years ago. It doesn’t pick up on a regular scan.’ ‘What?’ ‘You’ve probably got less than six months to live.’ What happened was, the sac around my heart had completely calcified. It looks like a goose egg. It was completely constricted and had grown into a solid rock. They cut me open and he’s tapping on this goose egg. Three hours later, you can see where he’s peeled it all off and you can see a beating heart. If they didn’t take it off, I would have had six months to go. It’s called a pericardiectomy, it’s very rare operation, only a few people can do it. Fortunately, WWE got me a doctor in Atlanta that did this. I was eight weeks in the hospital after that. This is November 23.
For the first time in my life, I was like, ‘I’m not going to make it, I’m going to die.’ About four weeks in, fluid leaking out of my legs, I was swollen like the Michelin man. I had a drip in both arms, I couldn’t move and cramping up. I insisted on going home. It was New Year’s Day, I was screaming and was cramping from my eyelids to my toes. I fell out of bed and on the floor, my wife couldn’t move me. Bailey, Regal’s son, came in and my other son picked me up off the floor. They got an ambulance and got me back in the hospital. I thought I was going to die. January 4, I got sepsis in my leg. January 4, my wife gets a call, three in morning, ‘Your husband has sepsis in his leg, we’re going to cut his leg off. He has probably 24 hours to live if we don’t.’ This doctor who was looking after me, his wife is a doctor, she was on call, she overheard a conversation that there is a fellow who had a pericardiectomy, she heard this, called her husband at home, ‘they’re about to chop his leg off.’ He called them and was like, ‘Inject him with this, this, this, and this.’ Somehow, that worked and saved my leg. I’m lying in a hospital bed after open heart surgery and two days before the NXT UK from Blackpool, where [WALTER/Gunther] debuted, and something in my brain went ‘click’ and I thought, ‘I’m gonna be okay.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Jay Briscoe Apologizes for Past Controversial Homophobic Tweets

As noted before, AEW’s potential plans to sign The Briscoe Brothers to a contract with the company are currently in doubt due to an issue with TBS and TNT’s parent company WarnerMedia. This issue revolves around past controversial homophobic tweets made by Jay Briscoe in 2013.

During a recent interview with the Battleground podcast, Mark and Jay Briscoe gave their thoughts about the past controversy and Jay apologizing for the comments he had made.

Jay Briscoe – “I want to say, thank you to the people who really know…we get labeled as homophobes. I put out a stupid tweet nine years ago, the most dumbest, immature, obnoxious shit I’ve ever done. I don’t want anybody, from any walk of life, to feel like they can’t care for the Briscoes because I promise we love everybody. We love everybody and we just want to go out there and be pro wrestlers and give the best match that we can. I said some dumb shit a long time ago, I apologized for it and I’ll apologize for it again. It was stupid. I feel like now there are people who look at us like, ‘we can’t cheer for them because they hate a certain group of people.’ We don’t hate nobody. We love everybody. We’re just some country boys. I thought I was taking a stand for the Lord back in the day.”
Mark Briscoe – “You realized, from that immaturity, that’s not what you were doing because anything, God and the Lord, he has love above anything. That card trumps anything else. What you thought you were doing, taking a stand for the Lord, was counterproductive to the kingdom of God, not only to being a human being and relating with other humans that we live with and love.”
Jay – “I feel like people label us a certain way. Trust me, we’re not like that.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Former American Wrestling Association producer and director Mike Shields passed away this past Monday. Shields’ passing was first announced on Facebook by Savoldi Wrestling Library. Among Shields’ notable career moments included his hiring of Eric Bischoff to a production job in AWA, which opened the door to Bischoff in the industry and played a big role in his rise as an influential figure during the Monday Night Wars in the 1990s.

Mick Foley recently announced on Twitter that he will be launching a new podcast series called “Foley Is Pod” within the near future.

The International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame recently announced the full list of inductees for their Hall of Fame 2022 class. Thirteen individuals were announced to be getting inducted for this year’s ceremony, which takes place on August 27th in Albany, New York. The 2022 class was revealed to be Fred Beell, Tom Jenkins, Alex Aberg, Tom Cannon, Jim Londos, Joe Stetcher, Karl Gotch, Billy Robinson, Riki Choshu, Genichiro Tenryu, Mildred Burke, Dork Funk Jr., and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

New Japan Pro Wrestling recently announced that The Good Brothers (Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson) and Great-O-Khan will be making an appearance at their Windy City Riot event on April 16th in Chicago, Illinois.

Game Changer Wrestling recently announced a new match for the card of their Paranoid event on April 9th in Los Angeles, California: