That’s a relief. Dean Ambrose is one of the true workhorses for WWE. He regularly tops the list of most matches in any given year and is almost never out of the ring due to injuries. That wasn’t the case this year as he missed about eight months due to a triceps injury. As it turns out there was a little more to it than that as Ambrose’s condition was a lot worse than originally thought.

In a new interview with the Monitor, Ambrose revealed that he also suffered a severe staph infection that was far more serious than expected. It led to him needing another surgery and extreme treatment for the condition, which caused him to move to Birmingham, Alabama for a few months. Ambrose goes into full details of the story and here are some highlights:

On The Staph Infection

“It was just one nightmare after another. It was a pretty challenging period of time to go through. I ended up having two different surgeries. I had this MRSA, Staph infection. I nearly died. I was in the hospital for a week plugged up to this antibiotic drip thing, and I was on all these antibiotics for months that make you puke and crap your pants. So it was a pretty rough time. My arm wasn’t healing correctly, and my triceps. It’s kind of an indeterminate period where I initially hurt it. I thought it was, we call it Dusty elbows.

“It’s a pretty typical wrestler thing. You just get this bursa sac of fluid on your elbow from banging it on the mat or whatever. I’ve had that dozens of times on both elbows. It usually just goes away. It was kind of disguised. By the time I finally went and got the first surgery, my triceps was already starting to atrophy and look weird. I wasn’t able to flex my triceps for a really long time. And then the first surgery didn’t really, something went wrong in the process. Probably due to that infection.

“It’s kind of hard to say when that really even got in my body. This is a long answer to your question. But for a minute there, it was getting scary. By the time I got that second surgery, it was March, I think. My arm was so shrunken and skeletal that it was weird. I hadn’t been able to move it or flex it in so long that I was starting to get scared I wasn’t ever going to get it back. To go from not being able to eat my Froot Loops, to being able to get back in the ring and throw people around and throw punches and do everything back to normal, it was a very gratifying feeling.”

And On Needing Another Surgery

“Before I went in for the first one, they were like, ‘OK, yeah, this is going to be a three- or four-month thing. You’ll jump right back.’ Once I woke up, they were like, ‘Oh man, this is going to be six months minimum. Because we went in there, and that thing was messed up. You beat it to death. It’s going to be a lot harder than you initially thought. But still, not so bad.’ They said they found traces of an infection during the first surgery, but they cleaned it out.

“I don’t know if it was in there previously, or if it came after. It could’ve been with me for years. I don’t know. But it was about six weeks or so after that I was like, this is not healing correctly. I didn’t have anything to compare it to, because I had never been hurt before. So I ended up going back for just a checkup. I thought I was just going to turn right back around and get on a plane and go home, and they were like, ‘No, you have to go in again for surgery like right now.’ I was like, ‘Oh, no.’

“I had just kind of got through all of the stitches and all of that stuff. It was a giant mess. I just kept having to start back from square one. I ended up just moving to Birmingham just to play it safe and be with the doctor and best rehab guys. As soon as I got out of the second one, I was flying home, grabbing my dog, turned right back around, got in the truck and drove to Birmingham.

“I just stayed there for two and a half or three months until they felt like I was pretty good. Once the MRSA really got out of my system, I was working out twice a day. Rehabbing twice a day on top of that in Birmingham. Doing everything possible to try to get my arm working again, and once I started to come back, I started to make a lot of progress over the summer. So I’m feeling good now.”

You can read the full interview right here.

He certainly looked fine from here.

Dean Ambrose returns before SummerSlam: Raw, Aug. 13, 2018

Opinion: Well that got serious in a hurry. While Ambrose does seem to be fine, that’s one of the scariest things you can hear at any point. Thankfully he’s fine of course, but those staph infections are nothing to mess around with. Ambrose isn’t someone who ever misses significant ring time so it was weird not having him around for such a long time. At least he’s back now and hopefully that will be the case for a long time now.

What do you think of Ambrose? Do you like his new look? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2003 Smackdown Reviews.

Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. We are proud to offer our popular Wrestling Rumors app and encourage you to download it for an optimized user experience. It is available for Android and also on iOS. Thank you for reading!

MORE IN WRESTLING

  • Video: Top Ten Hell In A Cell Invaders

    News
  • Breaking: WWE Making Big Change To Its TV Schedule

    News
  • Video: Seven Remorseless Moments That Made Us Sick

    News
  • Hell In A Cell Kickoff Show Match Announced

    News
  • 205 Live Results – September 11, 2018

    News
  • Video: WWE Releases Renee Young’s 2012 Audition

    News
  • Video: Impact Wrestling’s Five Strangest Stipulations

    News
  • Backstage News On Why Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch Isn’t Inside The Cell

    News
  • How Did Brie Bella Respond To Her Botched Suicide Dive?

    News
  • Here’s Why 205 Live Talents Are Appearing On Monday Night Raw

    News