Wrestling legend Tommy Dreamer has undergone treatment for his third battle with skin cancer.
The 52-year-old IMPACT Wrestling star, who is known for his work with ECW and , made the revelation as he was talking about his forehead looking shiny, which he explained as as a result of the cancerous lesions and subsequent treatment.
He said: ‘I know you’re all looking at this and saying, “What the hell is so shiny on your head? Are you going to town? Are you having barbed wire matches? Being crazy?”
‘No, guess what ladies and gentlemen? That’s skin cancer. That’s right. Being a Guido all these years has caught up to me.
‘This is the second time, no, the third time I’ve had skin cancer, and of course, it’s on my head but I’m not a pretty boy anymore. I’m hardcore.’
Dreamer noted he has undergone Mohs surgery again to have the cancer ‘cut out’.
‘Scary when they tell you [that] you have cancer and it’s the best form of cancer, but you have to get it removed for this,’ he added on his House of Hardcore .
‘I’ve had it here on my chest, I’ve had it on my head, and now I have a bigger one on my head. What you’re looking at [on my forehead] is the grossness of 42 stitches.
‘I had 23 outside and 19 inside. You don’t feel it when they’re cutting you. It’s weird. They numb your whole head. The weirdness of it is they have to cauterize your stuff, so you could smell your skin burning.’
Dreamer also noted that the cancer was one of several reasons he’d recently taken time away in terms of TV work, and noted he has known for a while but the treatment has gone well.
‘I’ve known for about two months because of, almost three, because of the waiting time to get the surgery, I’m just like, man, is this going to be bad? Thankfully they got it all and it has all worked out,’ he said.
As for the potential cause, he pondered: ‘I don’t blame the sun. I do blame lack of sunscreen, having a giant forehead, but most importantly, I do blame tanning beds.’
Dreamer is a former ECW World Heavyweight Champion and held the tag titles three times – one run each with Johnny Gunn, Raven and Masato Tanaka – while he held WWE’s version of the ECW Title, as well as capturing the Hardcore Title a staggering 14 times.
