Brutus Beefcake Reflects On His Devastating Injury During A Parasailing Accident
During a recent edition of the Stories With Brisco & Bradshaw podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Brutus Beefcake recalled the devastating injury he suffered during his parasailing accident in 1990.
Brutus was in the operation room for 16 hours straight and it was a battle between life and death for the WWE Superstar.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the accident that took place: “We were out having fun, parasailing, and … doing stuff on the lake. Basically, we put the parasail away — we’d had a couple [of] incidents. … We were gonna hop on our bikes, take a ride, and then we had some guys — we had a band that was gonna play. We were out on this huge, big house [that] opened up on the lake. And next thing you know, Brian Blair comes up … with a girl. The girl wanted to parasail. Mike jumped in the boat. I’m working the line. We’ve got 300 feet of special kevlar line for the parasail. They’re trying to get them ready up on the beach so this girl can … go parasailing. Finally, Mike — he’s disgusted with the whole thing. We’re just about ready to go, but not quite, and Mike just takes off.”
On his face collapsing: “I turned right into her knees in my face at a 30 to 35 mile-per-hour impact. The impact had blinded me. I had optic nerve damage. It had crushed all my airways, so I couldn’t breathe. My palette broke and [had] collapsed. [I] couldn’t open my mouth. I was trying to talk with [my] thumb pushed in my mouth, just trying to worry about breathing. I’m trying to tell them, ‘I’m hurt bad.’ Also, I kept saying, ‘My face is falling off. My face is falling off.’ Because everything had collapsed. I had disintegrated my entire facial structure, and everything collapsed.”
On his treatment and surgery: “They were rolling me in a gurney out to the parking lot to put me in these machines. They decided I was not stable enough to risk a helicopter flight of 20 minutes to the [trauma center], so they had to treat me on-site. You want to talk about a miracle? Just that I’m alive at this point is a miracle, and now the best guy in the world is on the case, and starts telling the doctors he wants to operate on me. I was on life support for several days in a drug-induced coma. When they finally revived me, my whole head was like a beehive of bandages and stuff. … My head was swollen like a basketball. My lips looked like tomatoes.”
“I was in surgery for 16 hours straight. All these teams of doctors, they said, ‘This guy is never going to survive that long,’ they kept telling the doctor. … The doctor told me after the thing, he said, … ‘You were in such good shape, your body just wouldn’t die. Your will to live was so strong, your body just didn’t give up.’”
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