Pro wrestler Buff Bagwell has undergone an above-the-knee amputation on his right leg, after a years-long health battle that stemmed from a car accident in August 2020.

Accompanied by his fiancée Stacy Brown, Bagwell spoke about his experience n a YouTube video posted before his surgery, sharing many of the painful details from after his car wreck for the first time.

“This has been a five-year journey of trying to save my leg,” he said.

Bagwell recalled driving home from a visit to his dad during that day in 2020. “I’d been drinking, but just a few beers,” he said. “Whatever happened, I’m going down the road with a Diet Coke and I…I’m gone.”

His vehicle crashed into a shopping mall, collapsing a brick wall and sending his car through the men’s and women’s bathroom. Miraculously, no one — other than Bagwell — was injured in the incident, though he says he should have “100 percent either been dead or been in prison.”

But the five years that followed were full of struggle, as Bagwell underwent 39-40 surgeries intended to repair his leg. The crash had ruined his kneecap, and he had knee replacements, flap surgeries and extension-mechanism repairs as part of doctors’ attempts to correct the problem, he says.

“My leg wasn’t healing, and so I was super depressed,” he says, adding that he drank heavily and spiraled into the “deepest, darkest addiction I’ve ever been in” in his attempts to cope with the situation.

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Bagwell entered a rehab facility to address his alcohol addiction in 2022. But after more health complications and an infection following another surgery, he had no choice but to undergo an amputation.

Another video posted to YouTube by fellow wrestler Maven Huffman shows Bagwell in the hospital after surgery, as Huffman visits him in the hospital.

In that clip, Bagwell remembers the moments right after surgery when he could feel and visualize his missing limb, and as he prepared to look down to where his leg used to be, he knew his emotions were going to take him in one of two directions.

“It was either gonna go to tears or it was gonna go to ‘Hey brother, let’s roll,'” he said from his hospital bed. “And it went to the next chapter. And I was good.”

“You can’t prepare yourself for that, brother,” he said, pulling back a blanket to show his friend his bandaged leg. “I mean, it’s not there. And right this second, I can feel my calf. I can feel my ankle.”

In the video he posted pre-surgery, Bagwell said he’s got a positive outlook on what lays ahead, and he hopes to prove that he can live a full life — complete with wrestling — without his leg.

“I’m gonna be able to run, and I’m going to be able to run better,” Bagwell says.

“I want to get back in the ring, hit the ropes, have a match,” he continues. “…I’m going to show the world that you can have just as good a life with or without a leg.”

Who is Buff Bagwell?

Hailing from the Atlanta, Ga. area, Buff Bagwell rose to fame in the early 1990s as a World Championship Wrestling (WCW) star. He is a five-time World Tag Team Champion.