Chris Bey has discussed the neck and spinal procedure he underwent following the injury that left him paralysed.
On October 27, 2024, Chris Bey and Ace Austin were in the midst of wrestling The Hardys over the TNA World Tag Team Championships when Bey suffered a broken neck which would threaten both his career and his life. The damage caused the 29-year-old to be paralysed for an extended period of time, though, while the future remains uncertain, he provided an extremely positive update on February 13 when he posted a video of him walking without assistance.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Chris Bey opened up on the injury and his condition, giving details on the procedure he underwent shortly after the accident.
“So they went in the front and they fused my C6 to my C7 which healed up pretty nicely. It was 19 staples across the front, which once I was finally able to move my hands a lot I was touching the staples a lot because couldn’t believe I had staples in my neck. What a weird feeling. They went in the back and they fused my C6 to my T1 because the damage that happened wasn’t just a neck break. It was also damage to my spinal cord, which is why I became paralyzed. So a lot of people don’t experience that exact thing, but people have their own stories, their own journeys. It’s difficult for everybody. It’s not a comparison.”
-Chris Bey
On the predicted chance of him walking again, Bey said that doctors gave him a 10-25% chance of getting back on his feet.
“They x-rayed me before the surgery, and I do remember them showing me what my neck was looking like. I believe there was a fragment I was pushing into my spinal cord, and that was one of the issues. Afterwards the conversation was more so about what they thought recovery looked like, what it typically is in this scenario, and what they anticipated would be my result. They say you see your most results in recovery, like the quickest results in around three to six months. In about a year to 18 months is where you’ll see where you’ll be. For me, they were predicting about a 10 to 25% chance of walking again.”
-Chris Bey
Understandably, Chris discussed how tough it was to deal with the immediate aftermath of his injury. However, he recalled a conversation with CM Punk that helped him change his perspective when it came to his recovery.
“The day I woke up from surgery, the first thing I thought was that I’m alive. I was grateful to be alive, because if I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore, I wouldn’t have been. So once I woke up, one of the first things I kept saying was day one. People use that phrase before. It’s not a new [thing], I didn’t create the phrase day one. For me it just meant this is day one as far as my new life, my new obstacle, my new journey. I break everything up into seasons in life, the season that I chased this, the season that I pursued this, and this was a new season for me. So what made me not quit was I was alive, and when I got that diagnosis for maybe 24 to 48 hours, I was a little messed up about it. I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it, and I was telling myself it’s better than a 0% chance, but I still was doubting a little bit. But then I had a conversation with Punk, and it was very simple conversation where he said something along the lines of, I think that diagnosis and that percentage applies to humans and you’re not human. I had to put my whole life into perspective. I’ve had a less percent chance of becoming a professional wrestler and landing on TV. I’ve had a lot less odds with everything that I’ve done in my life up until this point. So who’s to say I can’t beat this one? And once I realized that 24 to 48 hours were over, it was go time.”
-Chris Bey
Then, he discussed when he first started to get a small amount of feeling back after the surgery, discussing how he had to work on his grip and how he still doesn’t have strong motor skills in his hands.
“My fingers and hands started to move upward. My arms, from the elbows [Around what point?] Probably about a couple days and a weekend [after surgery]. Every day they would come in and monitor me and check for the first couple weeks where my feeling and sensation goes. So they’d start up here and they move down and go, ‘Does it feel normal here? Does it feel numb?’ And whatever I would say that it feels normal when it changes to numb, they’d mark it, they would keep track of that, and it slowly started to move but I didn’t have a lot of dexterity. I didn’t have that. So we had to work on all of those things. We had to work on trying to grip things. My girlfriend would have to text everybody back for me, or hold my drink for me while I drank, or feed me. I couldn’t grip things. I couldn’t move those joints, but I would do the little exercises they would teach me in the room at first, just to try to get some sort of strength back in my fingers. My fine motor skills are still not very good with my hands.”
-Chris Bey
When it comes to possibly wrestling again, Chris very much has a never say never attitude, saying he’s targeting every goal as it comes.
“Never say never, right? The day after day one, the day after the surgery, I was very content and understanding that my career was over. I didn’t see a world where I came back to wrestling. I was laying there, couldn’t move anything from the neck down. It felt like I had passed away, because there’s all this love for me online, they say you get your flowers when you’re gone. There’s all this love for me online that everyone’s telling me about and everyone’s calling me and having people reach out to me who I’ve never my wildest dreams imagined reach out to me. They’re making video packages about me. It was like I was watching and spectating my life and my life is now over, and wrestling is my life. It was my life. It is my life. It still consumes me. In that moment I was like okay, wrestling is over. I want to one day have a family. I want to be able to one day stand and run and play with my kids one day. Family was something I never thought about in my early 20s, but in my later 20s now being 29 is very important to me. It’s something that I want so badly, not now, but one day, and the the thought of never being able to achieve that broke me. That broke me, and that drove me more than anything because I had a great eight years in wrestling. Eight years, that was it, but I did so much in eight years that lived my wildest dreams. I feel like I made an impact on the world. I was able to help train, coach and motivate people who are in the game today. It’s a dream career, if it had to end, if it’s over now, cool. I want to walk, I want to stand, I want to be able to function. And then maybe a couple weeks ago now I’m walking again and I’m back in the gym. I told my girl, I was like, what if I do wrestle again one day? I’m still young. What if I took five years off, if I took four years off and came back in my mid-30s? It’s possible. It’s been done before. Nothing’s impossible, and that’s where the greatest story ever told is born.”
-Chris Bey
On how TNA have supported him, Bey talked about how the company have paid for all of his medical bills and how everyone there have done what they can to help him as much as possible.
“They’ve been so great to me. They’ve covered all the medical expenses. They check on me almost every day. When I say they check on me, I mean from the roster to the talent, behind the scenes, people who set up the building and management, presidents of the company, people from Anthem, everybody from top to bottom has been so helpful and have checked on me. They’ve done auctions for me. People have donated their own personal items to help me. They do so much more than I could have ever anticipated or expected, and I don’t understand why anyone would think that they wouldn’t, they are a great company. They work very hard. We are a family. People say that and you’ve heard people say that about TNA, but it’s true. They had to almost get police escorts to get people to leave the hospital the night of my injury, because almost the whole locker room was outside of the hospital ordering DoorDash, waiting for me, trying to come in and see me. They had to tell everybody, ‘Y’all gotta go home. Y’all not gonna be able to stay here. He’s going to be okay. He’s in surgery now. He’s going to be fine.’ But everybody was out there, you everybody’s wearing the We Heart Bey shirts, the whole team, top to bottom, family is not even the right word anymore, because families sometimes betray you. These people are real.”
-Chris Bey
Elsewhere in the interview, Bey noted that he doesn’t currently feel pain or discomfort related to his recovery, but can only feel about 50% of the sensation in his hands due to the numbness that arose following his injury.
As for his career to this point, Chris Bey is a former X-Division Champion and has held the TNA World Tag Team Championships three times alongside Ace Austin.
Bey’s continued recovery is incredibly inspiring and it goes without saying that we wish him all the best with regard to his future.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on the recovery of Chris Bey as soon as we hear more.
All transcriptions from ChrisVanVliet.com
