Former TNA wrestler, who is now working for them in marketing and production, joined Dave Lagreca and Doug Mortman on Busted Open to discuss a number of things. Here are some of the highlights.
Where he is health and job-wise: "Health wise, I feel I'm pretty close to 100 percent. I'm still doing rehab on my neck. I rehab 3 times a day. As for a job, I was wanting to come back and wrestle but my neck still has some issues, bumping and everything like that, so as of now I'm doing marketing and production for TNA, I'm backstage now."
Whether he'll be able to get in the ring again: "Yeah, I think so, eventually. I think right now they're just concerned on all the miles on my neck. If I was coming back right now for a one time deal it might not be that big an issue but to go back on the road full time would just be too tough on my neck right now. It's only been about a year and a month now since I broke my neck."
Support he has received from the fans: "I was extremely surprised. I remember when I first got to the hospital I told Dixie Carter that I don't want everyone to forget about me since I wasn't on TV that long and then instantly, within 2 days, my twitter went from around 1,500 people to around 12,000 people. It was cool to see everything blow up like that. But of course I was paralyzed at the time so I wasn't really using my hands to tweet a whole lot."
What he went through that night against Zema Ion: "The move, I don't even remember exactly how it happened or what happened, I just remember I turned around and I see Zema do the moonsault and it looked like he was overshooting so I stuck my hands up to block and clearly that didn't happen. I felt the knee hit me in the head and I blacked out at the time and then referee Brian Stiffler rolled out and checked on me, said, 'hey, you alright?' At first, I felt like I was fine, well then in my head I'm telling myself to push myself up just to get up and I look over and my wrists are completely bent in and nothings moving. Then I remember Stiffler rolled back out and he was like, 'hey, you know I'm going to count you out, you have to get up,' and I said, 'I can't move, I'm paralyzed.'"
Zema reaching out: "Well it was really weird because him and I were really good friends before the incident. We had actually roomed together a lot and after the incident I didn't hear from him really at all for probably 6 months. Didn't hear a word and it was really weird because me and the guy were pretty decent friends and we both came in to TNA about the same time and he was one person, of course, I expected to hear from and never got a call or a text or anything. I think he might have come by the hospital one time but never really heard from him at all.
"It was weird because I did the X Division PPV in June or July and that was the first time I had even seen him since it happened. He came up, shook my hand like nothing had ever really happened and I remember for a while I was wondering should I reach out to this guy because I was hearing from people in the business that I didn't even know, guys that aren't even in this company, maybe I should just wait on him. It was just weird because we were friends and I was getting calls and texts from all sorts of people, I made so many friends in this business because of my injury, but I at least expected a 'hey bro, how you doing? If you need anything let me know.' Just something. And I remember I was so heated at him for a long time and then when I went to do the X Division PPV he shook my hand and I was just like, whatever, I'll let it go. And we didn't really talk that day and then I think it was a week later he wound up working with my friend Dakota Darsow and had a long talk with Dakota about how he was worried about everything and I guess it was just one of those deals where he didn't really know what to say to me. So then at that point we got on the phone and talked about it. I told him, 'I wasn't mad at you at all, it's wrestling, it could happen to anybody.' I said, 'I just wanted to feel like you cared,' and obviously he did care a lot. He was like, 'man, I just thought you instantly hated me, I could of killed you,' and all this stuff. Then we completely squashed everything and it was just a total big misunderstanding. He really did care but he didn't know how to reach out and I didn't know how to reach out. But as of now, we're great. We're still boys."
