Perry Saturn says he has been clean for 15 years and is working his way back to fitness after two hip replacements, while dealing with a heart condition that followed complications from the surgeries. Saturn spoke about his recovery, his finances and his current health on the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
Saturn spent years addicted to drugs and homeless after leaving WWE in 2002, a period he has discussed publicly before. He said he reached his lowest point in Iowa, and that a moment with his dog, who came over and put her head in his lap, is the reason he is still here. He said he decided he could not leave her.
“I thought, I can’t. She needs me,” Saturn said. “And somewhere in there I figured out if I can hang on for her, maybe I can get my s*** together for me.”
Saturn said he got clean in 2010 without going to rehab, and that the same stubbornness that fuelled the rest of his life is what got him through it.
“I was a drug addict and I was lying to myself constantly, and I had to stop doing that,” Saturn said. “When I knew I had to quit doing drugs, I just quit doing them. I didn’t go to rehab or anything. I knew I shouldn’t do them anymore, so I didn’t do them.”
He said he’d gotten clean before that and relapsed, and that each attempt taught him something about how memory works against you.
“Every time you relapse, it’s not as good, and you romanticize, and you only remember good s***,” Saturn said.
Saturn said he eventually got off the street after a workplace accident. He was working a job installing telephone poles when one fell on him, and the workers’ compensation settlement gave him enough to buy a house.
“I got like a $70,000 check for it. I bought a house,” Saturn said. “I thought, this way I’ll never be homeless again. And I still live in that house, and I’m gonna live in there till I die. It’s paid for.”
He said he has been living on disability since, describing a years-long application process.
“Eventually I got it, and I get $745 a month,” Saturn said. “That’s what they pay me to live on, but I don’t pay rent, so that’s a big deal.”
Saturn said his YouTube channel has changed that arithmetic, and that he is off disability this month because of the income.
On his physical condition, Saturn said he had both hips replaced last autumn, one at the start of October and one in the middle of November, after roughly a year in a wheelchair. He has also had both shoulders replaced. He said he spaced the two hip surgeries too closely together, which led to complications.
“I got blood clots in my lungs. From that, I developed congestive heart failure,” Saturn said. “So I have fluid around my heart now. For now, it’s like if I walk across the room, I get out of breath.”
He said he is treating the outcome as settled.
“It’s going to get better,” Saturn said. “I’ve already decided it’s getting better, so it’s getting better. There’s no way it’s not going to.”
Saturn, who turns 60 on October 25, also said he deals with what he described as the effects of CTE and has limited use of one hand. He has spoken about head injuries for close to a decade, telling an interviewer in 2016 that he was dealing with a traumatic brain injury that limited what he could do, and joining a class action lawsuit against WWE that November which alleged symptoms of repetitive traumatic brain injuries. He said he is working toward getting back into shape without steroids, with an eye on doing more instructing.
Asked what he is grateful for, Saturn named his grandson, his longtime friend Raven, and his career.
“I got to stand in the middle of a ring and make 80,000 people scream their f***ing heads off, and that’s pretty cool, man,” Saturn said.
He said his grandson, now 17, lived with him and his wife for about 12 years.
“I didn’t have a father growing up, and I wasn’t a good father to my kids because I was gone all the time,” Saturn said. “But I had an idea of what I thought a father should be, and I was like that for him. More than anything, I want to be the person my grandson thinks I am, and that’s what I go for.”
Saturn last wrestled regularly in the early 2000s, with sporadic returns to the ring in 2011 through 2013. He has kept a public profile since through interviews, convention appearances and his YouTube channel.
