Buff Bagwell (@Marcbuffbagwell) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WCW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the DDP Yoga Performance Center in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss what led to his leg needing to be amputated and why he let Maven document the surgery, his battles with addiction and what led to him getting sober, possibly competing in one more match, how DDP helped him turn his life around, having one of the best physiques in wrestling, inventing the Blockbuster, and more!
How are you feeling right now?
“I’m blessed. I’m not sure who has their leg amputated, and five months later says they’re blessed, but I am blessed. It’s been crazy, this journey I’ve been on with this thing. But it all came at me at once, like from the leg getting amputated, to my sobriety, to my relationship with Jesus Christ, to my relationship with Stacy. I have 12 grandchildren, and I love it all.”
What led to the decision to allow Maven to film you getting your leg amputated?
“To be honest with you, ratings. I felt like it would be the best way to let people know, and we could get a rub off of the YouTube channel. I like Maven a lot. Funny story about Maven, and this probably is actually the true answer behind what you just said. Chase Brogan, my YouTube producer, called me up and gave me this bill that 1,000 other people have gave me, I said, Brother, there’s no money in that. There’s no money. It’s very hard to make money, if any, it just don’t work. He goes, but you’re sober now, and it hit me. I went, Okay. So I’m listening. So he flies into town and puts a Maven video on. I’m looking, and I’m watching, and I was not impressed at all. He goes, ‘Hey, that guy makes $200,000 a year on YouTube.’ I said, ‘Two things. Number one, I don’t believe he makes $200,000 a year. Number two, if he does make $200,000 a year, we’ll make four. We’ll do it. Because what I’m looking at, if that’s 200 grand, then we’ll do four.’ I was wrong on both. He did make that money, and we’re not going to double him. It’s some kind of crazy magic in the bottle thing that guy has got. He puts a video out about Waffle House, it gets a million views. I put one out that I think, personally, is a little better, and it gets 30,000 views.”
So you reached out to Maven?
“I reached out to Maven and said exactly what I just told you. I said, ‘Hey, brother, what do you think about you being the person that breaks the news on me losing my leg and me getting a little rub from you? You help us along the way, build my channel?’ And he goes, absolutely, let’s do it. And that’s what we did.”
You are a completely different person now:
“I’m a completely different person. I am sure why, God. I believe I was always a pretty good guy. Matter of fact, Marcus Alexander Bagwell in 1991 was a great guy. Everybody in the locker room loved Marcus Alexander Bagwell, and I think through drinking and pills, drinking and drugging, I lost that Marcus. I really believe that’s what happened. I believe when the drinking and drugging stopped, Marcus instantly started, slowly coming back, and now Marcus is fully back to where. When I walk in a room, it lights up again, but not just from eyes I see. It lights up inside of me.”
When did your addiction start?
“I would say the time I feel in my head that it really started was when I got my own prescription bottles. That would have been 1998 when I broke my neck. It started legitimately with, Hey, man, I’m hurt. My neck is hurting, and I would take a pain pill, and it just climbed crazily from there.”
How were you still able to look like you did?
“I’m going to say something that nobody’s going to believe, but in the height of the best I ever looked, it was a case of beer a day, and 20 Lortabs, without exaggeration, 15 to 20 Lortabs, and 30 to 35 Somas every day of my life. We just a bodybuilder makes a really good drug addict or a really bad one, however you want to look at that, but it’s very organized. I had severe sleep apnea, and I wouldn’t sleep good, so when I woke up in the morning, again, I don’t feel good. I deserve this. So I would have my first party. I would take five or 10 Lortabs tabs, and eight to 10 Somas, party one and I did that kind of party on an empty stomach three times a day.”
When did you realize it was a problem?
“I realized I had a problem through all that. I went to rehab several times. My first rehab was early 2000 right after the WWE thing and all that. I went to rehab. I went for five days. They told me it was a medical detox. That was the word, but it’s not true, it doesn’t happen that way, but that’s what they said. Day eight, I was right back, taking pills again and drinking again. So I tried, I did five, five or six rehabs throughout that journey, but the last rehab before I got sober was 2012 and I did an interview with you right after that. I’d got it under wraps. I got a little bit of grip with it. But I wasn’t sober. It was the closest I got to being sober in 2012, but when I had that car wreck in 2020 and I really had hurt myself that I couldn’t fix it, I was angry. I was so mad at myself that I couldn’t fix this problem. I’d had other wrecks and knocked my teeth out, but fixed it. I would have a bad injury, but I fixed it. I couldn’t fix this one, so I fixed it by fixing me. I got sober.”
How long have you been sober now?
“Three years and five months. August 27 of 2022 is my sobriety birthday.”
For people who don’t know what happened with your leg, that car accident was kind of what started this?
“Absolutely. So in 2020, I had a car wreck where I was under the influence of pills and alcohol, and I drove through a bus station, it’s a bus station bathroom, men’s and women’s and nobody was in it, thank God. In that car wreck, my right knee cap exploded. So with it exploding, 40 surgeries over the next 3 or 4 years trying to fix it. Infections in and out. Knee replacement, I think it was 41 surgeries total. Then I was just going to deal with this leg that didn’t bend anymore, and it got infected again. And the doctor goes, ‘Let’s cut it off.’ And I went, Whoa, wait a minute, brother, we did 40 something surgeries. Let’s try to fix it one more time. I can’t just cut my leg off. So I went to that appointment to see what it was like to save my leg. In that appointment is where I stopped the doctor, as he was explaining, he was talking about pulling a skin graft off of this shoulder to close it up. I said, Whoa, what? So it was so devastating what I was hearing. I said, What’s the percentages of all that working? And he said, about 20%. I said, let’s cut it off.“
Were you able to come to peace with that decision?
“No, not at all. I was devastated. I did not, and you cannot see this. I tried to see it, but I just don’t think you have the eyes to see this part of it. The truth is, I should have done this two years earlier. I really believe if it would have been proposed to me two years ago, I would have thought they were crazy. Now, I’d have said no, no, no, like I did this time. But if I would have done it, I’d have been two years ahead. So this has been with my situation of the leg I had, this is unbelievably good what happened to me, but you just don’t see that when you’re going through it.”
If you weren’t battling addiction, would your knee have healed up quicker?
“Absolutely not. I think that whole process may have been a little quicker. I mean, I may have got to cutting it off a little quicker. But there’s no alcohol or pill addiction that was going to make that situation worse.”
But was it hurting the healing process?
“I think it prolonged everything. I think I would have just got to the amputation much earlier, probably if I would have been real healthy and eating good. It wasn’t going to make my leg bend, you know, so with it not making my leg going to bend, I kept drinking and taking pills because I was trying to make me better mentally. I was trying to throw a curveball at that leg. I was devastated that I was never going to be able to walk correctly again. So I sedated myself, and I was under sedation for 20 consecutive years. There wasn’t a day that didn’t go by for 20 years that I wasn’t some percent sedated.”
I’ve heard you say you want to wrestle again?
“I know I could wrestle again, another match or two, but if I can’t do it, I’m not going to do it. And I’m not sure that’s possible. I don’t want to be ugly. If it’s ugly at all, I’m not going to do it. So, for example, this $135,000 leg. Because of this, there’s no way to make steps look good. So that will be the first thing you got to conquer, is getting in [the ring] or sliding in and getting up fast. But again, if I can’t do those things without them being I’m not going to do it, but I think I can. I think I can do it where it’s not ugly. I just don’t know yet, so we’re definitely going to, in the next couple of months, I’m going to get in the ring and just see what I can do. But I really do think no matter what I will do one match just because that’s one of my goals.”
Have you connected with Zach Gowen?
“Several times. Zach’s a great guy, and he’s been very helpful with everything. And it’s just a different situation all around. One is he’s had his leg for years.”
You are walking right now though:
“So that’s only two weeks old without a cane, so two weeks with no cane, but just how weird that was. I didn’t believe I was ever going to walk without a cane, because that’s how much I needed a cane. I didn’t get it. I was at PT one day and a guy walked in with my deal with no cane. I said, ‘How long would it take you to do that?’ He said, ‘About a year.’ I went, Okay, that makes a little sense to me, because I couldn’t see doing it ever, ever putting the cane down. Then about another week goes by with PT and everything. And I realized that the cane was only there because of the hurting inside the socket. All there is you’re a cut off leg, an ace bandage about this big that they call a liner, that goes on real tight and it goes inside of that. I said, is there no pillow or comfort thing there? And there’s not. It’s just that finally gets tough, and it’s in the process of my journey. I’m five months in right now. Five months ago, I cut my leg off, and it finally started getting tough to wear. That was a big part of the cane that it didn’t hurt. So I’ve been walking with no cane for about two weeks and getting better and better every day.”
You’ve been documenting this right?
“Yes, we just started shooting on that. Still Buff is what we’re going to call it, and it’s just going to document the whole journey of God, sobriety and my leg, the whole journey of that. Because in that order, no matter what order you come up with for you sobriety, for your career, for your business, for your children, the number one thing should always be God, and in mine, it was God, Stacy, and then myself. In that order, I was able to put together three years and four months of sobriety, and that’s been magical for me in that order.”
It seems like you’ve been able to now make the distinction between Marcus and Buff, and for a long time, you were just Buff:
“That’s a perfect, perfect analogy. It’s funny you say that I remember the boys, Disco Inferno in particular, we would be talking, and he’d be like, ‘Is that Buff or is that Marcus?’ We would laugh and joke about it because it was funny. After all, back then, there was a Buff and a Marcus, and then somewhere in there those lines get they get cloudy, they get not so clear. That happens, you live the gimmick. I didn’t think I was doing that, but obviously I was, but I do believe that comes with also the alcohol and the pills just really clouded it up. It’s not just, you know, Macho Man lived his character. I could care less about living my character. I just believe that your character ain’t far from who you are anyway. Buff, when you saw Marcus Alexander Bagwell in the wrestling ring, Buff’s there too. I’m just a babyface. I’m a good guy. But when you’re Buff, you got to turn it up. It’s just turned up a little. But I think that gets confused even more with alcohol and pills.”
Do you feel like you had one of the best physiques in wrestling?
“I really do. But I don’t think the business does, which kind of upsets me. I remember Flex magazine came out with an article of the 10 top guys, and I wasn’t in it.”
Who was on the list?
“Steiner, Luger, Sting was on it. So it was guys that, you know, and my buddy sent a thing in, the guy at Flex sent back ‘We were talking about A talent.’ And I went, Whoa, but they still put my picture back in there anyway. But it’s just like when Razor Ramon was in there. And I love Scott Hall and Diamond Stud, I thought he looked great, but he really wasn’t a body guy after that.”
Do you think if WCW didn’t go under you were on course to win the World Championship?
“100%. There’s not a doubt in my mind. Very early in WCW, I knew that I would be hated because Missy taught me this. Missy showed me and taught me that you’re going to have to work 10 times harder. And I’m like, why? She goes, ‘Because you’re good-looking and because you’re young. If you don’t walk in every single time and shake hands and thank everybody and work hard, you’re going to get buried.’ She goes, ‘You will get buried anyway.’ And she was right. I walked in and I was hated. I was hated by all of them. I made friends, not trying to, but I made friends with Sting. Then one day they met me, and they were like, ‘Wow, he’s really a good guy.’ I remember Sting coming to my house to play basketball one day, and when he got to my house, remember the old school answering machines? Both Steiners were on my answering machine and Sting was amazed. He said, ‘Did I just hear Robbie?’ Because he called Rick Robbie. ‘Did I just hear Robbie and Scottie on your answer machine?’ I go, Yeah. He goes, what happened? I go, we ride motorcycles and stuff together. He goes, what? Because those guys hated my guts and we were best friends for a while. They hate my guts now too. I think they do. I did a video on Robbie, a bad video that I thought was funny, that he took personal. Looking back on it, I think it may have been a bad idea, but I really thought it was just funny. I thought everybody knew it anyway, but he got mad about that, I heard. Scottie, I think he’s mad at everybody.”
Did you invent the Blockbuster?
“I invented the Blockbuster. So glad you asked this, and it’s a great question, and I’m just now going through this personally with seeing a Mark Henry video that he got upset over this, and I said I knew it was a big deal that the guys are using the blockbuster. It’s a giant deal that the move that I named and created is on television right now. That was 25 plus years ago. That’s amazing, bro, and I’m so glad and happy from it. Logan Paul did it just two weeks ago, and 10 texts came through. ‘Hey, they used your move.’ I mean, I wish they called it the Buff Blockbuster, but at least, at least call it the name I created and this bothers me. I always got to tell the truth. Disco Inferno named it. He asked me if we could call it that. I said, Sure, I love it. Let’s call it the blockbuster. So he named it and the old school knock your block off, it’s your head. So it’s the Blockbuster. But where that came from is I was a huge Rick Rude fan. Rick Rude may have been my favorite wrestler, and he had the rude awakening. I hit Scottie Riggs with the Rude Awakening to join the NWO That’s how much I loved the Rude Awakening and Rick Rude, but you can’t copy it exactly. So I said, How can I make it different? I want to add somebody and that helped me. But nobody did. It was just me. I mean, back up in a minute. Scotty Riggs helped a lot, but I came up with off the ropes, some type of neck breaker. And then me and Scotty Riggs in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, before Souled Out, was in the hotel room, and we were practicing it on the beds, how to land. And the next day, when we got there, we were going to do it in the ring, practicing it in the ring. That day was swamped with pre-tapes, so we never practiced it once. The first time I hit it ever was on live television, Souled Out, and it was probably the best one I ever did. So that’s where it came from, and just thrilled to death that they still use it. It makes me feel important. It makes me feel like I did something that counts. It’s a big deal for guys and girls, the girls use it too, and they still call it the Blockbuster. I just love it that they kept the name. And here’s the problem, I don’t think they know it’s mine, but I know it. So I wish the world knew it was Buff Bagwell’s move, but I know that a big part of the people do, and it means a lot to me.”
What is Buff Bagwell grateful for?
“God, my wife and my leg.”
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