legend Chris Jericho has detailed his terrifying health battle after.
The veteran star – who is currently featured as a top name in rival promotion All Elite Wrestling () – was touring Europe with his band Fozzy towards the end of 2021 whendue to what was confirmed at the time to be a non-Covid related illness early in December.
Jericho was released from hospital days later, but the former world champion and his team stayed tight lipped on the health scare.
Now, he has given some more details after his boss Tony Khan recently revealed the star had been suffering from blood clots.
Elaborating on a new episode of his podcast, he said: ‘I was in the hospital for blood clots, but it wasn’t just blood clots. It was actually a pulmonary embolism.
‘Pulmonary embolism basically means blood clots in your lungs. That’s what I had, a whole bunch of them, which are now pretty much gone, all of them are gone, which is great to hear.’
He revealed that during the tour, he found himself ‘having problems walking’, and he got a call informing him of the blood clots after getting some tests done.
He admitted: ‘I was just thinking, “Give me some pills and I’m on my way”. They tell me very soon after, “Yes, you’ve had a pulmonary embolism”. What does that mean?
‘It means that your lungs are filled with blood clots and you are now staying in the hospital… They went and did an ultrasound and found that there was evidence of a clot that had been in my throat.
‘Now, if a clot gets in your throat, that’s getting into stroke territory.’
Jericho – who was put on blood thinners – revealed his oxygen levels had gone down, and he was ‘starting to freak out’ when he was told doctors might need to ‘put [him] on oxygen’.
He added: ‘That was terrifying because, at this time, people were going on oxygen and if that wasn’t working, they were going on ventilators because they weren’t getting enough oxygen in their blood. I’m starting to freak out because I don’t want to end up on a ventilator because they are bad.’
Finally, doctors started to get things under control and he was able to fly back and recover, and he and Khan decided to keep him off television for a bit longer until they knew how things were developing.
‘I get back home to Tampa, I talk to Tony and we decided I would stay off until Christmas,’ he recalled. ‘I don’t know if I can wrestle again or not because you can’t wrestle on heavy blood thinners.’
He has since returned to the ring in better shape than ever, and excelled as the leader of the Jericho Appreciation Society.
