Former WWE Hardcore Champion Steve Blackman has revealed the shocking extent of the physical pain he endured throughout his time with the company. “The Lethal Weapon” stated that due to severe neck injuries, he suffered from debilitating migraines during the vast majority of his WWE run.
Battling Through The Pain
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Blackman detailed how four bone spurs digging into the nerves in his neck made his wrestling career a constant battle with pain. “I’m going to say, 80% of my run,” Blackman estimated when asked how long he dealt with the issue. “It was brutal.”
He described the cycle of pain he went through on a regular basis. “It would be like Monday I’d wrestle and get a migraine… I mean feels like you’re being stabbed in your head. Throw up, lay down, throw up, lay down, go to bed. The next day, sleep all day, wrestle the next day the migraine again,” he said. “It’d be like every other day I’d have a migraine.”
Migraine Problems
The pain made performing in the ring an almost unbearable experience. “You can’t imagine what it’s like getting forearmed or body slammed when you have a migraine, you feel like a grenade went off in your head,” Blackman explained. “I wrestled Kane one night in a hardcore match… The migraine kicked in in one second… Every time he hit me, I felt like a grenade was going off. And that was the beginning of the match. We had 15 minutes more to go.” He noted that the hardcore style actually worked well for him because it allowed him to use weapons and speed, which was often easier on his neck than taking traditional wrestling bumps.
Since retiring, Steve Blackman has undergone two neck operations that have significantly reduced his headaches and improved his quality of life. He mentioned that he now has days where he feels good enough that the thought of having another match “crosses my mind.”
