WWE Star Should Have Died After Brutal Crash

WWE star Erik of the War Raiders has opened up on the horror crash that could have ended his life.

In 2014, Erik and Ivar teamed up for the first time in Ring of Honor. At the time, the pair were known as Raymond Rowe & Hanson, aka War Machine. However, just as they were beginning to make a name for themselves in the promotion’s tag team division, disaster struck when Erik was seriously injured in a road crash.

Recently, the star recounted the details of the accident in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, saying he didn’t even have time to think before his motorcycle crashed into a car that unexpectedly pulled out in front of him.

“So in 2014 actually, just after War Machine started rolling. He [Ivar] and I spent 11 or 12 years each not making any money in wrestling, basically both giving up on making wrestling our career. We get offered Ring of Honor contracts. We start wrestling. Everything’s starting to go good.

“Then like I had done every day for two years, I got on my motorcycle, went to the gym, left the gym on my way to get something to eat. A girl was texting at a stop sign, and she just pulled out right in front of my motorcycle. So I was going about 55 miles an hour, and she was maybe 30 feet in front of me.

“I hadn’t even had the conscious decision to brake, whether I was going to try to brake and turn to miss her or lay my bike down, I just kind of said, Oh. I didn’t even get the full word out of my mouth, so I wasn’t even censoring myself, and I smashed into the back of her car.

“So instead of hitting the hood, I had turned and jerked the wheel and I hit the back seat. So because I had torqued the handlebars like this, I broke my left thumb. I shattered everything above my left arm to my elbow to my shoulder. Then I went up over my handlebars. I punched out her rear window with my face, lacerated above my eye, broke my nose, but I didn’t break the cartilage. I broke the bone, the skull, hit my knee, and then I stood up, and my arm was like wiggling.

“The girl comes out of the car, and she’s crying. She’s like, ‘Do you need me to call the ambulance?’ And I was like, Yes, please. Then the ambulance shows up and they pull up across the street or across the intersection.”

The former WWE World Tag Team Champion walked over to the ambulance when it arrived, only to find the paramedics pulling out a body bag as they had expected the crash to be fatal.

“Yeah, I was [still standing]. I had sat down at that point, and I just stood up off the off the curb, and I started walking to the ambulance. I remember that I saw the ambulance and the paramedic grabbed a body bag out of the back, because they just assumed from the call that I was dead. I walked over and there’s literally a body bag on the ground. I’m like full Walking Dead, right? Because my whole face is like gnarled up with blood and stuff.

“The paramedic looks at me, and he’s like, ‘Sir, you’re not supposed to be walking.’ I’m sure I was in shock at this point, and I was like, ‘Do you want me to go sit back down?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, you’re already over here. I just want to stabilize your neck before you do anything else.’ I was like, okay. He’s like, ‘Unless you want to walk to the hospital.’ I was like, ‘How far is the hospital?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, it’s about three miles.’ And I was like, No, I’ll take the ride. I’m sure he was teasing me at that point, but I was in so much shock that I didn’t know what was going on.

“Then everybody I talked to after that, the emergency room docs, the surgeon, all the doctors were basically like people don’t typically live, because I wasn’t wearing a helmet. We’ve talked back and forth on whether or not that actually saved my life or not, and I’m not advocating that you shouldn’t wear a helmet on a bike.

“I’m just saying mine one in a million chance, because I hit the window with my head, and there’s a chance if I was wearing a helmet it would have been bigger, and I could have hit the cross guard over the top of the car, that might have snapped my neck. It might not have, I don’t know.”

Erik not only survived the incident but was able to get back to the ring only six months after undergoing surgery.

“I know that my dad has always told me that I give my guardian angel the hardest time, and I almost outran him that day. But, yeah, he was looking out. There was a reason that I survived that, and a reason that I was there.

“So then the doctors were like, ‘Yeah, dude, you should be dead. You should have died in the physics of this accident, usually this is a fatal accident. There’s no way you’re going to wrestle again, your arm is completely shattered. It’s destroyed. Everything from the elbow to shoulder is just destroyed, you’re going to be lucky to lift weights.’

“Six months later I was wrestling again. I had two plates, 18 pins and screws and, I don’t know, six or seven hour surgery, putting my arm back together.”

The War Raiders Triumphant In First Match Since WWE World Tag Team Title Loss

At WrestleMania 41, The War Raiders lost the WWE World Tag Team Titles to The New Day in controversial circumstances. Now, it looks like they could be on the path to regaining the gold. On the April 28th edition of Raw, Erik & Ivar defeated The Judgment Day in their first match since losing the gold. Although they got some help from Penta, the win should help set them up for a rematch against Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods.

H/T to ITR Wrestling for the above transcription.