Rich Swann's 2020 got off to a rough start when he suffered an injury at Impact Wrestling/RCW Bash At The Brewery 2 in January.
The ankle injury kept him out of action until Slammiversary in July when he was able to make his return to the ring. While the timetable would potentially indicate that the injury wasn't too terrible, as Swann detailed on Busted Open Radio.
"After I broke everything; it was my ankle, my foot, my fibula, my L5, L6, after that was demolished, I got into the car with a buddy and we drove to Dallas because we had two more shows before that. I waited and was like, 'hopefully this is just a bad sprain' even though I saw my foot turned sideways and it was hanging. I waited a couple of days and I finally went to the hospital. They told me I definitely need surgery, but they weren't doing any surgeries due to COVID. I get home a week later in Orlando and get surgery. Then, they saw my back was fractured as well. They're telling me my fibula is broken and the bone is poking right at the skin. It also went through the skin. My right side of the ankle was lodged up into my shin, the left side was lodged up into the calf. The top of my foot was peeled off," he recalled.
After meeting with doctors, Swann wasn't sure he would be able to wrestle again.
"Once I started going to the doctor after the surgery and they saw how severe it was and I started showing videos of my work, he looked at me and said, 'Bud, I don't think you're gonna be doing this.' We started getting more serious and he said I might have to think about another profession and I might not be walking, I might have a limp for the rest of my life," he said.
Though Swann returned to the ring at Slammiversary, he has yet to wrestle since and IMPACT has teased his retirement throughout his storyline with Eric Young.
Swann is scheduled to face Young for the IMPACT World Title at iMPACT Bound For Glory.
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