There was a point in time during his injury when R-Truth thought he would never be able to wrestle again.
WWE Superstar R-Truth was a recent guest on The Ringer Wrestling Show. When asked about his road to recovery from injury, Truth revealed a second injury that took place during his time away which almost forced him into retirement.
“Yes, there was a period (when I thought I might not be able to wrestle again). I mean, I had a hole in my knee,” R-Truth revealed. “A hole. I had five different bacteria that caused an infection, along with MRSA, staph, and they cousins and kinfolks. It started off as a routine quad tear. As a matter of fact, I tore my bottom quad, and they went in and I guess it could have happened during surgery.
“But I went to get the stitches out and that’s when we found out the bacteria, the infection was eating from the inside out so that’s where the hole came from and I just remember the doctor would never give me a high five… He said, ‘Well, we gotta get this under control. If we can’t get this under control, we’ll have to think of other options…’ He was straight-shooting with me. ‘You’re in the woods big time. We have to get this under control.’ It wouldn’t heal. It would not heal.
R-Truth details the seriousness of his infection
“So then I had to go three months — I had to have a wound VAC. I don’t know if you ever heard of that before. I’d never heard of it. It was a V.A.C. that was on my knee that kept sucking — I don’t know if that’s P.G. (he joked). It kept sucking the old blood up and putting in the new blood and all that stuff. I had to wear that for six weeks and along with a P.I.C.C. line.
“I don’t know if you ever heard of that before… So I had to have that for eight weeks. Did that and once all that was over with, the stitches started coming out on their own. So I had stitches coming through my knee, out by themselves. So my body wasn’t agreeing to them, so I had to go back into surgery for a third time. Third surgery and the infection was still there. So I had to get another P.I.C.C. line as well.
“So man, it was just a good four months, five months of just trying to take care of the infection, slow it down, stop it, not go mentally crazy because there was a chance, he said, the other option was amputation, so to go from doing the (WWE) 24/7 stuff. I was running around, doing things with my kids, to NXT, me and Grayson Waller tearing it down, doing things to stopping, and then getting told this, it was a big reality check. It was a pump-the-brakes moment.”
Maintaining a positive mindset
When asked how he maintained a positive mindset during his infection, R-Truth said the initial shock of it all and his faith helped keep him calm.
“I think just the initial shock of reality keeps you calm because it’s almost surreal to you,” R-Truth admitted. “It’s almost, wow, and my mind is replaying everything that I’ve done in my career, my years, my life. From being on stage rapping to in the ring to training. Anything and everything I’ve done to that point was replayed in my mind.
“So I think just being humble all these years kept me calm. Having faith kept me calm. Having my family around kept me calm. I was getting calls from different people. That kept me calm and just me knowing, okay, it’d be a big adjustment, big change but life has to go on. It’s just a lot of things I had to juggle, deal with, accept, swallow, and keep it moving.” [H/T: POST Wrestling]
READ MORE: R-Truth: I Like Being Funny, The WWE 24/7 Title Was My Playground At The Time
What do you make of R-Truth’s comments? Are you surprised to learn his injury got that serious during his time away? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
