Wrestling superstar Marcus “Buff” Bagwell had most of his leg amputated Thursday, following years of medical complications stemming from a serious car accident in 2020.
The amputation was confirmed Friday by Bagwell’s longtime friend and BookProWrestlers.net owner Steve Stasiak, who said in a heartfelt statement that the above-the-knee amputation had taken place early Thursday morning.
“I’ve known Buff a long time. I’ve seen him in the spotlight, I’ve seen him behind the scenes, and I’ve seen him fight through things most people never even hear about,” Stasiak wrote on Facebook. “This one… this is hard. For him. For everyone who knows and loves him.”
According to Stasiak, the former World Championship Wrestling star never fully recovered from a car crash near Atlanta on Aug. 16, 2020.
Authorities said Bagwell lost control of his vehicle, struck a metal fence in the median and then crossed into oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the road, Ringside News reported at the time.
“The injuries from his 2020 accident never fully healed,” Stasiak wrote. “He gave it everything he had to avoid this outcome — but that fight led him here. And now begins a whole new kind of battle.”
About 12 hours before his surgery, Bagwell recorded a video explaining that he was about to have most of his leg amputated.
“This has been a five-year-long journey of trying to save my leg,” he said in the emotional video, sitting next to his fiancée, Stacy Brown.
“I’m trying to be excited about [the amputation] and I think it’s going to be a wonderful thing,” he said. “So I’m trying to make a bad situation good again, like I’ve done a lot of times in my life. But I really do think this is the right call. And I’m really thinking that I’m going to have a better quality of life.”
