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Lex Luger Responds To Rumors Of His Death

By on February 10, 2018
Lex Luger

It’s always shocking to hear when a former wrestling star has passed away — especially for the person in question, who’s still alive and kicking.

The latest victim of this is former WWE and WCW wrestler Lex Luger as rumors of his death are false.

This hoax comes from Wikipedia as a malicious individual vandalized the website’s article on Luger to claim that he died of a heart attack on February 2, 2018, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Thousands of wrestling fans took note of this as our page on Luger saw a spike in searches asking if he’s dead or alive.

On Twitter, a fan brought this hoax to Luger’s attention.

Luger responded with the following.

Despite the hoax, Luger is a former wrestler who many fans wonder if he’s passed away. After leaving the limelight, the former champion had his share of personal problems, including a spinal infarction that left him temporarily paralyzed.

On October 18, 2007, Luger was on a flight to San Francisco, California when he began having difficulty moving his neck. Thinking it was simply a case of having sat in an awkward position for much of the cross-country flight from Atlanta, he tried to jar his neck back into place, only to make his predicament worse.

Luger arrived in San Francisco in much pain but still able to move. He awoke the next morning, however, paralyzed from the neck down and unable to even call for help. A desperate Luger maneuvered on the hotel room floor, where he remained for more than four hours.

Doctors at Stanford Hospital and Clinics noted massive swelling of his spine from the C6 to T5 vertebrae, attributing the damage to the many disc injuries and bone spurs he’d collected during three decades of football and professional wrestling.

“I injured my neck on an airplane from Atlanta to San Francisco,” Luger explained in a 2009 interview with WWE.com. “The way I had turned my neck while sitting on the plane had basically cut off my blood flow. It was just a freak accident, but it caused massive swelling from my C6 [vertebra], at the base of your neck, to my D5 in my chest. It paralyzed me from the neck down.”

Luger remained a complete quadriplegic for more than two months, without as much as bladder or bowel control when he got transferred to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia in November 2007.

The incident was tragic, and the prognosis bleak. Luger, however, did not lose faith. Through his determination and belief of his newfound convictions, he worked incredibly hard to overcome his debilitating condition, surpassing what many believed he’d ever been able to recuperate.

“I was in a hospital in Stanford, California, where they ran every test on my heart and brain,” Luger said. “They told me that I was a healthy 49-year-old, though I’d be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of my life and need 24-hour medical care. But my recovery has been just phenomenal. Now I live on my own, I’m walking and I’m thankful for that. Nobody knows if I’ll make a 100-percent recovery, but I’ve gotten so much back already … more than anybody would ever have thought.”

Now 59 years old, Luger is enjoying a much simpler life in Buffalo, New York, living with his mother and spending most of his free time helping others at local schools and churches.

“One of the things I do is try to get a positive message out there in the local schools and tell my story,” Luger said. “I also do a lot of faith-based speaking, sharing my story and testimony, to help show what God has done in my life and what he can do in others’ lives.”

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