Wrestling legend Buff Bagwell has right leg amputated above the knee

Marcus Bagwell, known by his wrestling moniker Buff Bagwell, is showing fans his vulnerable side ahead of a surgery to amputate his right leg.

Bagwell appeared on World Championship Wrestling from 1991 to 2001, where he was a five-time World Tag Team Champion. The legendary wrestler posted a video to his YouTube channel on Friday sharing how he went from dominating in the ring to preparing for a life-altering surgery.

Appearing in the video alongside his fiancée, Stacy Brown, Bagwell explains that the amputation was “the result of a five-year battle trying to save my leg” after an August 2020 car accident.

Bagwell explains that he crashed his Chevy Tahoe into a structure behind Cumberland Mall while inebriated, and that the incident occurred while he was still recovering from surgery on his foot and had recently had his knee scoped from a minor meniscus tear.

The former wrestler says part of the building collapsed, and it severely injured his knee cap, resulting in a seven-week hospital stay and a seemingly constant journey in and out of the hospital for 21 surgeries that Bagwell says led to the “deepest, darkest addiction I’ve ever been in.”

In the five years sine the accident, Bagwell has battled to keep from losing his leg, as well as working on his substance addiction. The wrestler went to rehab in August 2022, and is coming up on three years of sobriety.

The journey to keep his right leg, however, ended on a very different note.

“I thought I was going to be able to get my leg back. I thought I was going to be able again to once fix it,” Bagwell admits. “I’ve got a relationship with Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I got a great relationship with Stacy — let’s fix this leg. And it just… it just didn’t happen.”

Bagwell says it’s been “39 or 40 surgeries,” including “knee replacements, flap surgeries, [and] extensor mechanism repairs.”

Despite it all, the result remained that there was “no stability” in his leg. And so, it’s time for the amputation.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Bagwell concludes. “I’m not like depressed… I fought the fight. I look down and I can say, I tried.”

In an interview with former wrestler Maven Huff, Bagwell revealed that he doesn’t plan to let his amputation keep him from the wrestling ring for long.

“I’m gonna be able to run and I’m going to be able to run better,” he vowed. “I want to get back in the ring, hit the ropes, have a match. It’ll show some that I’ve came out of the darkness with this thing, and I’ve turned it around all the way to being back in the ring as Buff Bagwell.”

He continued, “You don’t have to give up with something like this. This is something that I am taking by the horns, man. And I’m going to show the world that you can have just as good a life with or without a leg.”

Friday afternoon, Bagwell’s close friend, Steve Stasiak, shared a snapshot of the wrestler post-operation on Facebook, explaining that the operation happened Thursday morning and encouraging fans to send Bagwell some love.

“I’ve known Buff a long time. I’ve seen him in the spotlight, I’ve seen him behind the scenes, and I’ve seen him fight through things most people never even hear about. This one… this is hard. For him. For everyone who knows and loves him,” Stasiak wrote.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

He continued, “The injuries from his 2020 accident never fully healed. He gave it everything he had to avoid this outcome — but that fight led him here. And now begins a whole new kind of battle. Buff was one of the brightest stars of a wild era in wrestling. He made you look. He made you care. But it’s who he is as a person — past the lights, past the persona — that I hope people think about today.”

Stasiak concluded his post with a call to action: “If you’re reading this, I just ask that you send a little love out into the world for Buff. No grand gestures. Just something real. A thought, a prayer, a moment.”