WWE legend Gangrel had ‘flames on his balls’ after getting trapped in horror accident during iconic entrance
Posted by  badge Boss on Jun 09, 2022 - 02:01PM
Gangrel ‘felt like an idiot’ after the incident (PIcture: WWE)

Former star Gangrel has revealed the horrific moment his iconic entrance went badly wrong.

The 53-year-old wrestler was a big part of the company’s famed Attitude Era both on his own and and his memorable entrance – which saw him come up from the stage surrounded by flames – is the stuff of legend.

The first time he tried it in front of a live crowd, things didn’t exactly go to plan as he ended up trapped in the elevator used in the stunt, which also left him with his now-iconic strut.

‘They said, “Watch the lift, it has a shimmy in it. So you gotta wait for it to shimmy and then walk.” I’m like, “Yeah, cool.” I did the dry rehearsal and there was no smoke, the flames didn’t seem as high, it wasn’t dark, and there was nobody in the arena so you were quite aware of it,’ he told podcast

‘When we went to go live and do it, the elevator comes up, I see all the people, you just get brought into that moment. I feel the shim but I thought the elevator stopped so I turned to go walk off stage left off the elevator and through the fire and my foot went in between the lift and the stage.

‘So it didn’t come all the way up yet, so it clamped down on my foot. Perfect timing, so I was stuck and I had flames up in my balls. That’s my very first entrance and it crushed my foot.’

Gangrel’s foot ended up ‘black for three or four months’, and led to ‘gangster limp’.

As transcribed by Fightful, he added: ‘My foot was – I didn’t tell anybody – my foot was black for three or four months. It was just horrible looking.

‘That’s why I ended up with that gangster limp that I had coming down because my foot got caught and smashed so I had that limp coming down. I was still so damn happy that I didn’t care that my foot was crushed.

‘That’s how that whole walk came about, the whole stagger step. I still walk like that today because I got the jimmy leg now but it started with my foot caught in that elevator because I didn’t look down coming up.’

Gangrel ‘felt like such an idiot’ during the entrance, and he admitted the crew teased him for the mishap for a long time.

‘I was sitting there literally and the fire was coming up in my crotch and I was pointing down calling, “Hey, hey,”‘ he said as transcribed by . ‘I felt like such an idiot, but it was taped so they cut. You don’t see it but the pyro guys, they ribbed me for a year about that.’