Buff Bagwell’s body took beatings for decades – but none like this.
The former WCW star, once famed for his sculpted frame, loudmouth swagger and five tag team title reigns, has lost his right leg after five years of agonising complications from a 2020 car crash.
He confirmed the amputation this week in a video from his hospital bed, calmly explaining: “I thought I was going to be able to get my leg back… I tried everything.”
“This isn’t the end,” Bagwell said. “I want to get back in the ring. I want to inspire people.”
It’s the latest chapter in a brutal road back from a wreck that nearly killed him.
On August 16, 2020, Bagwell crashed his Chevrolet Tahoe in Cobb County, Georgia, veering across the centre lane and hitting a curb, a fence, and a business sign.
Police at the time believed he was ‘impaired’ by prescription medication, the results of the crash leaving Bagwell with a shattered right kneecap and multiple broken ribs.
Countless surgeries followed for the showman – over 40 in total – but the damage to Bagwell’s lower limb eventually proved insurmountable.
Bagwell tried to tough it out for years, limping, falling, and masking the agony with pills and booze. “I was in the deepest, darkest addiction I’ve ever been in,” he told People in 2023. “Alcohol, pills—anything to kill the pain.”
He got clean in August 2022 and stayed that way. But the damage was done.
By early 2025, the leg was beyond saving. On July 17, surgeons removed it above the knee.
Bagwell’s journey to theatre was documented fully by wrestling colleague Maven – a former WWE star behind a hugely successful and popular tell-all YouTube channel.
In a new video, Maven meets with Bagwell before his journey to hospital and films his arrival there, later revealing his intention to ‘film the entire procedure.’
However, those incredible plans were left in tatters by hospital staff.
Bagwell was told the facility ‘couldn’t have anyone back there’ during his prep for surgery, but Maven adeptly managed to squeeze his equipment back into the patient’s room once he’s laid up in bed and seemingly ready to go.
As the pair embrace, staff are heard saying of the camera: “Are you recording, sir?” then adding: “You gotta turn that off, I’m sorry.”
Maven’s team then covers one camera with the lens of another as the duo say their farewells, but the filming is spotted again as they leave the room.
A member of staff is then heard saying: “You have to turn that off, I’m sorry… It’s still flashing red.”
Maven can then be heard insisting that his filming only has Bagwell’s ‘best interests at heart,” before a voice replies: “I just have to follow the policy.”
It then emerges that the former WWE Tough Enough winner and his filming team were ‘escorted out’ of the hospital after their attempts to capture footage.
He later sets up outside with an update to viewers, saying: “We tried to film the entire procedure, but when this hospital says, ‘no filming’, they mean it – to the point where we were escorted out.
“They took our Visitors badges, our passes, and it took a whole lot of sweet talking to get them back, just so I can see how Buff is doing later.”
Maven returns to Bagwell’s bedside eight hours later, what he calls ‘sizable complications’ resulting in the amputation procedure taking five hours – far longer than the expected two.
The 48-year-old is later reunited with Bagwell after the successful procedure, the patient immediately positive about his prognosis.
The former WCW standout — who famously joined the nWo and teamed with the likes of Scott Steiner, Shane Douglas and 2 Cold Scorpio — had only one televised match in WWE, a Raw main event in 2001 that was received badly enough to kill off the WCW Invasion angle. He was released just days later.
But before that, he’d been one of the most recognisable faces on Nitro, peaking as a cocky, mirror-toting heel during WCW’s Monday night dominance in the late ’90s.
Now, Buff is writing a different kind of comeback story, vowing that he’ll be running again soon enough – with ambitions to return to the wrestling ring, too.
“God is leading the way to all of this… I think I was here on this planet to be Buff Bagwell on TV – what a perfect gimmick,” he goes on to say from his bed.
“What if I was put here for this? And it ain’t ‘what if’ – it is ‘make it happen.’
“There’s no difference with this and the videos I’m seeing of the [people with] prosthetics.
“If they can run, I’m gonna be able to run, and I’m gonna run better. I want to get back in the ring, hit the ropes, have a match.
“It will show that I came out of the darkness with this thing, turned it around, all the way to being back in the ring as Buff Bagwell.
“You don’t have to give up with something like this.”
Bagwell’s last match was a tag team affair in the spring of 2024. Adding one more would make his comeback the stuff of legend.