WWE Superstar Reveals He Suffered a Near Career-Ending Injury

WWE Superstar R-Truth made his triumphant return to WWE at Survivor Series in November. After a year away rehabbing his torn quad he sustained in a match against Grayson Waller in 2022 on NXT. The injury required surgery but he didn't believe anything was out of the ordinary. After that match, things quickly turned for the worst and it turned into a near career-ending injury.

R-Truth revealed in an interview with Fightful that when it initially happened he wasn't considering retiring from wrestling at all. Unfortunately, he then developed an infection in his knee that turned into "MRSA, staph, their brothers and their sisters and cousins." Because of the nature of the infection and injury, it caused him to have a hole in his knee so he wasn't able to bend it for three months until it was under control. Once it was taken care of his rehabilitation was easy for him, though he was fearful he would never step inside a wrestling ring again.

He then appeared on Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg where he expanded upon the nature of the injury even further, noting that he almost had to have his leg amputated. "I had a hole in my knee. I had five different bacteria that caused the infection along with MRSA, staff, and their cousins and kinfolks. It started off as a routine quad tear. I tore my bottom quad. They went in and I guess it could have happened during surgery. I went to get the stitches out and we found out that the bacteria, the infection, was eating from the inside out so that's where the hole came from. The doctor said, 'We gotta get this under control. If we can't get this under control, I'm gonna have to think of options.' He was straight shooting with me. He said, 'You're in the woods big time. We have to get this under control.' It would not heal."

He goes on to say he almost had to undergo a third surgery because his body was rejecting the stitches and treatments. It ended up being a big reality check for the 52-year-old. "Then I had to go three months, I had to have a wound VAC on. It was a VAC on my knee that kept sucking the old blood up and putting the new blood, all that stuff, like I had to wear that for six weeks all along with a PICC line that I had to have for eight weeks. I did that, and once all that was over with, the stitches started coming out on their own. So I had stitches coming out of my knee by itself, so my body wasn't agreeing to it so I had to get surgery for a third time and the infection was still there, so I had to get another PICC line as well. It was a good four months or five months of just trying to kill the infection, slow it down, stop it, and I'm going mentally crazy because there was a chance, he said, the other option was amputation. You know what I'm saying? So to go from doing the 24/7 stuff, running around, doing things with my kids, to NXT, me and Grayson Waller tearing it down and doing things to stopping and then getting told this? It was a big reality check man. It was a pump the brakes moment."  (h/t: WrestlingNews.Co)

In January of last year he revealed in a livestream that he had to undergo a second surgery because of a developed infection that would push back his in-ring return even further. "Yeah, I'm going back to WWE. I just got to heal up. I had to have two surgeries," Truth said. "A lot of people don't know that. I caught an infection, so I had to have another surgery. So that set me back. Y'all know me, I'm coming back probably sooner than y'all think."

As far back as August, R-Truth had been teasing his return to the ring when answering inquiries from fans about his whereabouts. Since his return, the beloved wrestler has taken a liking to Judgment Day. After defeating JD McDonagh in a "Miracle on 34th Street Fight" R-Truth stated McDonagh was kicked out of the group and he was taking his place instead. Despite the groups discretions, he continues to declare himself an official member and is featured on an official WWE Shop shirt. On the Day 1 episode of Monday Night Raw, R-Truth reunited with The Miz wrestling together as their former tag team from the 2010s "Awesome Truth." They wrestled on this week's episode of Raw, taking on the Judgment Day in a rematch. R-Truth has been with WWE since 2008 has won a number of championships in his 16-year career. He is a 53-time WWE 24/7 Champion, a two-time United States Champion, and a former WWE Tag Team Champion with Kofi Kingston.