Gangrel’s fire entrance had already cost him once, when a stage lift crushed his foot on his 1998 debut. Years later, on a WWE return, it cost him a lot more.
Speaking on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Gangrel said the problem started when the company no longer had the rig he had used the first time around. He had been brought back for a tag match alongside Viscera against The Undertaker, part of a feud JBL had pulled him in for.
“They go, we don’t have your regular lift anymore, but we have what Rey Mysterio pops out of,” Gangrel said. “The other one was six foot by three foot. You had three guys on it, three guys could fit. Three guys aren’t fitting on this. Barely my big butt was fitting on that.”
The size of the opening changed the physics of the pyro, and Gangrel said nobody caught it before the dry rehearsal.
“When they started the fire, because it was such a small hole, it backdrafted in, so it pulled the flames in on me,” Gangrel said. “So I was standing in this little hole getting barbecued.”
Unlike the powered lift he was used to, this one was being raised by hand.
“I literally jumped up. I became the most agile I’ve ever been in my whole life. I jumped up out of there, because it was a slow crank lift. They were manual cranking,” Gangrel said, contrasting it with the foot injury on his debut. “My foot stuck in the first one, I wasn’t burning, it was just really hot. This one, I could see the skin.”
He said he waved off the concern and went to work.
“I get up there and they’re like, oh, I go, no, no, it’s cool,” Gangrel said. “A smart guy would have went and sued and retired or something, right? Not me. I was just happy to wrestle. I love wrestling.”
He wrestled the match that night with the arm bandaged.
“They cut the skin off, cleaned it up, bandaged me up, and then I went. I wrestled,” Gangrel said. “If you look at that match, you see the arms a little thicker, because I had it all bandaged up. And then I was out three, four months. I had to get skin grafts.”
Gangrel said he heard the crew paid for it.
“I heard he fired that whole pyro crew for that,” he said.
The damage is barely visible now, and what is left is covered.
“You don’t even notice it now. It’s a little lighter. I got tats over it, but it’s just a little lighter color,” Gangrel said. “Not bad now, because I had the grafts and they did a great job.”
