Mance Warner shares the story of suffering a collapsed lung in 2019 during a match.
In an interview with Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling, Warner spoke about the moment he actually had his lung punctured. Incredibly, Warner was able to finish the match and get himself back home, thinking that it was something involving his ribs and something that he could sleep away.
“Well, it’s weird man because, it happens, I take a bump to the floor and I just thought maybe I did something to my ribs or something. I couldn’t breath for a second. So we keep going, I think there was a couple more minutes left, I get done with it and I get backstage and I kind of collapse and I just couldn’t breath at all. But still I’m thinking — because we’re crazy, we’re all nuts. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I gotta get to the airport because I gotta go to Portland and do another show’ so I’m just trying to like, ‘Okay, I’ll lay here a little bit, I’ll get up and keep on moving.’ Eventually, people talked me out of it. They’re like, ‘Man, you’re f*cked up, you can’t go.’ So I ended up getting in a car, get back home, drove myself home. I had someone drive me halfway and then I got to my vehicle and I got to where I had to go. Me being stubborn, I just laid in bed and I was like, ‘Maybe I’m just sore. I’ll be okay,'" Warner said.
A little more than a day after the match, Warner eventually made his way to getting it checked out which is when he learned of his collapsed lung. Warner even said the doctor was bewildered as to how he was able to walk towards the doctor's office. In the end, Warner would recover and get back to wrestling, albeit with a big hospital bill.
"Then eventually, fast forward, about a day and a half goes by and then, my family ends up talking me into going to get checked out and I just thought I’ll get checked out and I’ll be fine. I walked in and they did a — I think they did an x-ray and then they do all the checking around and sh*t and I remember the doctor looked at me and he was like, ‘How the f*ck did you walk in here? You got one lung. Your other lung is like a pancake.’ So they ended up cutting me open, they put the little tube in there and then they do what they gotta do and then I was in there for I believe a day and a half, and they said I was good to go, so then when they go to take the tube out, I start squirting out blood and sh*t. They’re freaking out and I had to stay there again and they put you on — whatever they shot in me just made me high as kite and I just watched TV all day but I just sat in the hospital but then you get that big ass bill, you gotta pay that off for the next 15 years, who knows, I don’t know but — now they got me for a while. But it’s one of those things where we all love this industry so much that, we’re okay with getting hurt, we’re okay with — we were taught, you gotta keep going, you can’t just stop, and even then it’s like, I rest up and I think I was out for a month and then I came back and my first match back was at Beyond Wrestling against Nick Gage in like a hundred thousand thumbtack match or something. You take no breaks I guess," Warner said.
The full interview can be seen in the video at the top of the page. Credit to Andrew Thompson for the quotes.
