WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, appeared on an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast. In it, he discussed various topics, including Jimmy Snuka hitting a splash on him in a steel cage match in 2000 on an episode of WCW Nitro resulting in worst injury of his career.
Jarrett said, “I knew, ‘Okay, Jimmy’s jumping off. I need to brace myself and prepare myself, but I am going to be laying right for him. If I need to scoot over.’ And he’s like, ‘No, brother, I’ll get you. I’ll make sure you’re close enough in.’ And so when I looked up, I had a comfort level that — you know, he’s jumping up, all that. And so if you look back, you know, I came on up, my head was well off the ground. But you just don’t really think about a 260-pound guy, literally like a bag of concrete. It doesn’t matter how strong I was. The whiplash, and my head smacking the back of the mat. And — you know, it took me a while going to Dr Tim and the diagnosis, and he was checking me out. My neck, all the way around, just how — horrible case of whiplash on top of a concussion. But that night when it happened, Conrad, I knew immediately, like, ‘Holy crap.’ But I didn’t think it was that bad until I got to the back. And I was trying to undress, and Slick Johnson was in there. He said, ‘You all right?’ I said, “Hey, man, is there any way you can turn those lights off?’ Because the light in the room felt like it was so bright? And you know, Benoit knew how to throw that headbutt. He was — not just that night, he always hurt himself more than he did his opponents. His body took years of pounding. But it is one of those things, I didn’t give it a second thought. We’re going to go do this three-minute match, three-minute match, three-minute match, and tell the story, and that’s what they want. And I’m going to work hard and make the best of the situation. Little did I know that was a — yeah, the worst injury of my career. By far, when I really look at it. Because my bell was wrong, and it was quite some time before I was right after that.”
On what it’s like having a concussion:
“You don’t want to see bright light. Your head is pounding. And a lot of times — I described it back then, because once I got into a cadence of going to Doctor Tim. Because when I came home, I cannot even believe I flew home. Because the next day after buffalo, we did a Eerie Thunder taping, and my bell was rung. And I think maybe all I had was an in the ring. I knew I couldn’t work. And then I flew home the next day and when I got home, I immediately went to Tim. And he’s like, ‘Man, you’ve got serious swelling.’ And my head, it’s like a headache — on a scale of one to 10, I’m sure I would have told him, ‘It’s way past 10.’ And my head just throbbing. And so it was, ‘Alright, we gotta get as much inflammation out of that as possible.’ I didn’t want to have any bright light. I came right home, and there’s a bedroom downstairs that has no windows… I went in there, because there were no lights in it. Literally no daylight could get in. So I shut the door, and I just tried to lay in there and put a roll under the back of my neck to try to slowly stretch it out. But the main thing was getting the inflammation out. And it took about three days, maybe two days to kind of get the inflammation out. And then once that was out, I was on my road to recovery. But as long as — you know, they say your brain fits in your skull, and you’ve got a scale of 1 to 10 based on how much room you have in there. But when your brain is rattled and the fluid swells up, that’s what hurts. You have basically all the pressure on your brain, and your brain can rattle around in that in your skull, and you don’t have much wiggle room. And you want to get all that swelling out. Conrad, that thing hurt bad. I’m just sitting here thinking about how uncomfortable it was. Pounding headache. And that was explained to me, that some people could get can have a concussion without whiplash… I was a mess for a while. But the first probably 48-72 hours were the ones that were almost unbearable.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
