William Regal Has 40% Vision In Left Eye: "Everything Is Grey"

AEW's latest signing William Regal recently spoke with Talk Is Jericho in an emotional interview.

Regal recalled going under neck surgery that was supposed to take one hour. However, he ended up learning that he had a baseball-sized lump of calcified jelly that took the doctor four hours to sort.

"So, it's supposed to be an hour, this is the first one for the front, they go in. I wake up and my wife is sat by my bed, I say, 'what time is it?' I look at the clock and it says six o'clock, she said, 'you were in there for four hours.' Then Dr. Maroon comes in, and he looks like he's run a marathon. He started to explain, he said, 'if I'd known what it was, I would have gone straight in the back. We are going to have to eventually go right in the back.'

"He's saying all these things to me and I'm going, 'what, what?' I'm still trying to come out of this haze, right? Eventually, I find out. They've opened me up and found out why my MRI looked so bad is, you can't see it on an MRI. I have got a huge big like baseball-sized ball of calcified jelly stuff holding my neck together. It has been like that, and after talking, probably from that match with Steamboat."

William Regal then revealed another health issue that he went through. This took place during a trip to Costa Rica with WWE, and that saw him fall down an escalator, smashing his face, and suffering three weeks of amnesia.

"I get off the plane, I am feeling a bit dizzy, but not bad. And just so anybody knows, no drinking, no anything, before anybody might think. This is all things with my heart. As soon as you come off the plane, it's like a rush of people trying to get down one escalator, you know how people just start pushing?

"I've got my roll-on, carry-on bag, and it's on wheels. This is what I think happened. I just remember being on top of the escalator, this is one o'clock in the afternoon, I am going to watch a South American wrestling tournament for three days or something. I get off the plane, feel a bit not quite right, I go with the bag, and all I can remember it felt like something caught the wheel on the rubber thing.

"Next thing I feel is, 'smash,' and that's all I can remember. I fell forward, I fell down the escalator, luckily I hit the rubber rail. It completely shattered my left eye socket, knocked me out. Luckily, Ryan Katz heard the commotion and come and found me, because I had three weeks of amnesia after that, I have no idea what happened."

Amnesia wasn't the only problem that he dealt with at that time. Regal also ended up losing 40% of the vision within his eye, which is something he hasn't gotten back. He then had three weeks which he can't remember at all.

"I was in hospital for a week in Costa Rica. And I shattered my eye socket, had three weeks of amnesia, and lost 40% vision in my left eye, which I still haven't got. Everything is grey," he added. "I can see, but it's all grey. Head injury, finally they got me back home, and I was doing some pretty mental things, unfortunately, my wife had to go through.

"No clue what I was doing. I have no recollection of the next three weeks but doing some really mental things. That three weeks in itself is a full show of insanity. Again, me nearly bleeding to death at one point, losing two pints of blood."

Regal also put over what WWE did for him, getting him to one of the top places for brain injuries in the world. He then breezed through the treatments that were put in front of him.

"Again, WWE, it's weird because I am here now. But WWE got me into it because it was a brain injury, the Sheperd's Center in Atlanta. There's three top places in the world, and the Sheperd's Center is one of them, for brain injuries. That's the one in America," he said. "Poor people have to wait for years to get into there, they got me in there, and I felt bad about it.

"Because, there were people in there that needed it, and I didn't feel like I did. But, I was in there. Then they recommended that I had all these treatments, but I breezed through all these treatments in six weeks, I had to learn how to balance, all these things. But at the same time, my legs are swelling up worse."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Talk Is Jericho with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.