Lex Luger details miraculous recovery from being nearly quadriplegic to standing for WWE Hall of Fame: 'I was at the breaking point' - Yahoo Sports

Lex Luger details miraculous recovery from being nearly quadriplegic to standing for WWE Hall of Fame: ‘I was at the breaking point’ – Yahoo Sports

2025-04-22T23:41:25Z

Lex Luger’s induction into the WWE Hall of Fame on Friday was heartwarming for more than the obvious reasons.

Luger joined fellow 2025 inductees Triple H and Michelle McCool among the eight individuals enshrined into WWE lore at WrestleMania week in Las Vegas. It’s been a long road to get there for Luger, and one many feared he’d never reach due to numerous legal troubles and battles with substance abuse. Luger’s health dwindled to such a degree he became a borderline quadriplegic in the late 2000s, suffering from minimal movement in his head and shoulders due to a cervical injury. He could lift his arms a bit, but that was it — until fellow WWE Hall of Famer Diamond Dallas Page came to his aid.

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The legendary duo on Tuesday detailed Luger’s recovery journey to the Hall of Fame on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” It all started when Page was contacted by one of Luger’s old enemies, Erik Watts.

“Watts was telling me how Lex has found Christ, he’s a completely different person,” Page said. “I’m like, ‘Bro, what are you talking about? Never happening. Not with Lex.’

“[Watts insisted,] ‘I’m telling you, it’s true.’ I go, ‘You hate him. I love Lex, but you hated him.’ Not anymore. He goes, ‘Actually, we’re living together.’ I was like, ‘What?!'”

Watts told Page about an autograph signing event with both MMA and pro-wrestling athletes involved. Page recalled agreeing to it, but really only cared about seeing Luger, especially after what he’d been told.

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Upon his arrival, Page said the event promoter called him in a panic, fearing Luger had a heart attack or some other health scare in his hotel room. Because of Luger’s condition, which was unknown at the time, the WWE legend needed the paramedics to break down his door with a battering ram.

“Your breathing is compromised with a cervical injury, so I tried to move my head and shoulders to knock the phone off the hook,” Luger recalled. “I don’t know what that would have done, but I was panicking, and I fell down to the floor. It was like being in a metal suit in a bag that pulled me to the floor. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was dehydrated or something.”

Page said he arrived after Luger had already been assisted and propped up in a chair. Initially, Luger declined the idea of hospitalization, insisting he was fine. At the time, from what the promoter indicated, Page assumed a heart issue or perhaps a hip issue was the culprit, as Luger was awaiting a double hip replacement the following week.

“I go, ‘I came here to see you. Are you OK?'” Page said. “I give him a hug, but I didn’t really notice he didn’t move. Lex says, ‘Sure, I’m good.’ The EMT is like, ‘No, you’re not. You have to go to the hospital.’

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“I had no idea. So when he gets back to the Shepherd Spinal Center here in Atlanta, my business partner, Steve Yu, we started filming with Lex 17 years ago when it happened. So we’re doing a documentary on it, and the reason why Lex came back to want to work [out] with me again, because I only had floor stuff then. Now you can’t tell me you can’t do my workout. It starts in bed, then sitting in a chair, then using a chair.”

Page, a longtime advocate for helping retired wrestlers such as Jake “The Snake” Roberts and the late Scott Hall rehabilitate their bodies, said the process was long and arduous, but Luger stuck with it.

“We filmed every video at every moment, and we’re going to start putting them up, because I was custom-making this to what he could do, as opposed to what he couldn’t do,” Page said. “I’d film it and send it to him. By next week or the week after, he’d come back to do more, and then he could do more. Then I said, ‘Try to stand up.’ He went to stand up, and he could — in the beginning, only get up a little bit, and he’d sit back down. But eventually, he could push himself off.

“I said to him that day, ‘See if you can get up without touching anything.’ And he couldn’t. He got a little bummed out, and I go, ‘Bro, no. This is good. You’re going to be able to do that.'”

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Ultimately, through determination and dedication, the 66-year-old Luger miraculously turned his health around and can now stand again.

The WWE Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday was an exciting moment — and an opportunity to show people he was in a good place.

Unfortunately, Luger took a tumble when he arrived in Las Vegas, forcing an alteration to his initial presentation idea and his presence at WrestleMania 41.

Lex Luger was once one of pro wrestling’s biggest names. (WWE via Getty Images) (WWE via Getty Images)

“We do our last workout, I’m doing the stand-up with no hands,” Luger said. “We’re milking it, we got a whole thing worked out. I was going to walk across the stage with Dallas up to the podium, come out in the chair, then walk across the stage. Uber driver drops my wife, Robin, and I off at the airport. She’s getting out on the far side. Uber guy rushed around to get my wheelchair at the airport. When I went to turn to sit down, he panicked and moved the chair on me. I landed on the sidewalk. It was a hard fall. My whole right leg went numb. I was buckling, so we had to call an audible at the last minute.

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“We were hoping it would come around in time for the Hall of Fame the following night, but it was right before we went out there. I told Dallas [the plan] was a no-go.”

For Luger, it took the extremes he went through to finally admit he was outmatched despite his incredible reluctance. It also took the legend finding his lowest point imaginable before he knew something had to change if he wanted to prove the doubters wrong.

The biggest doubter of them all, however, was Luger himself.

“I heard I was voted ‘most likely to be the next wrestler found dead in a hotel somewhere,'” Luger said. “I read that one time back then, but when you’re going through it, you always think, ‘It’s my own body, I can do what I want with it.’ I went down that path with drugs and alcohol and excess, and really made a lot of bad decisions. I was a stubborn one, and I wouldn’t listen to anybody, I wouldn’t get the help. I always thought I could fix anything. I was also supremely, some would say, an arrogant individual.

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“You hear in terms of rock bottom, end of your rope — I had to reach the point where I was in such a bad way … where I said, ‘I can’t fix this.’ God allowed me to be totally broken down. I had to get myself out of the way.

“I was at that point. I was at the breaking point where I was broken enough to look up rather than around, and I think I had to fix it, because I was the problem.”

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