D-Von Dudley said a doctor told him he would have been dead, paralyzed for life, or in a nursing home if he had arrived at the hospital one minute later when he suffered a stroke in 2019 while working as a WWE producer in Hollywood, California, speaking in an interview with DJ Vlad.
D-Von said he was in California producing a fight scene for Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss on the set of a Punky Brewster remake. After wrapping for the day, he went to his hotel room, ordered food, and went to sleep. He said something told him to unlock his hotel room door before going to bed, which he initially resisted.
“Something’s telling me unlock the door, as clear as day. I don’t know what it was. It kept bothering me. I was like, F it, ain’t nobody coming in here. I unlocked the door, I went to bed,” D-Von said.
D-Von said he woke up thinking it was the middle of the night and collapsed face first on the floor when he tried to take his first step. “I fell face first onto the floor, busted my mouth open and everything. All of a sudden, I couldn’t feel my legs. I didn’t understand what was going on,” he said.
He said he had to army crawl across the suite to reach the bathroom and could not stand. His wife at the time called the hotel repeatedly after he would not answer his phone. D-Von said he kept telling the front desk to stop calling his room because he thought it was early morning and did not realize it was 11 AM.
“She goes, ‘You’re having a stroke.’ I said, ‘I’m not having a stroke. I’m too young to have a stroke,'” D-Von said.
His wife then called the hotel and told them to send someone to the room immediately. “She goes, ‘I think my husband is having a stroke, somebody better go up there and get him now, because if he dies, I’m suing this whole hotel and the whole state of California.’ So they panic. They go upstairs,” D-Von said.
Because he had unlocked the door earlier that night, hotel staff were able to enter the room. Paramedics confirmed he was having a stroke. Doctors had to put a stent in his right side and run it up to his brain to break up the blood clot. D-Von spent two weeks in the hospital and was unable to fly, so he had to be driven from California back to Melbourne, Florida.
“The doctor told me, if you would have been a minute later, you would have either been dead, paralyzed for life, or in an old age home for the rest of your life. You’d have been done,” D-Von said.
D-Von said he then had back surgery six to seven months after the stroke to fuse L4, L5, and S1 in his lower back after the discs began deteriorating from years in the ring. He said the combination of the stroke’s residual effects and back surgery left him struggling to walk and unable to stand for long periods.
D-Von listed his full injury history: eight surgeries, a cell replacement on his left knee, ACL replacement on his right knee, 50 percent of his meniscus removed from his right knee, his lower back fused, multiple disc replacements and fusions in his neck from T3 down to C4, a reattached retina, and approximately 10 to 12 concussions over his 33-year career.
A friend suggested he call Dallas Page about DDP Yoga. D-Von said Page told him he wished D-Von had called before the surgery. D-Von said the yoga transformed his recovery by breaking down scar tissue and restoring his mobility.
“The first time I did the yoga, it was like a breath of fresh air. What he’s doing is breaking down the scar tissue in your body,” D-Von said. “Instead of trying to be the Hulk and look all jacked up, I don’t care if I weigh 160 pounds. Just let me be able to walk and have some type of normalcy.”
D-Von said he wants to be able to move and play with his children without being a burden on them. “I want to make sure that I’m able to still play with them and not embarrass them,” he said. “Now I’m walking with no issues, no problems, because I make that a part of my workout routine.”
D-Von credited DDP Yoga with helping Scott Hall, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Butterbean, and others who were in worse shape than he was.
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