Former WWE Superstar and one half of the legendary Tag Team known as The Killer Bees, Jim Brunzell, who has filed a lawsuit against WWE for failing to care for the repeated head injuries along with a dozen other WWE Legends that recently appeared on the Pancakes and Powerslams Show, where he revealed a story about how he was forced to work with a concussion.
Starting the story, Jim talked about a match where he was wrestling against the Barbarians. According to him The finish of the match involved a high kick which made him unconscious and he had to be helped backstage afterward:
“There was a point in the middle eighties, toward the end there, I worked in Salt Lake City, and I was working against the Barbarian. His finish was a high leg kick coming off the ropes, and he comes flying off the ropes and hit me in the chin and I slammed the back of my head on the mat. I was out. They had to help me in the locker room,
Continuing the story, The former WWE Star revealed that three days later, he learned that the kick had resulted in a third-degree concussion:
I just couldn’t get my bearings. So, for two days, I was sort of nauseated and dizzy, and you know what, I told the guy, and the agents said I still had to wrestle every night.
Then, I was in [Los Angeles], and this doctor (Ungar, I believe), was examining me. I told him, I don’t feel too good, I took a bump on the back of my head in Salt Lake City three nights ago.
He looked at me and said, ‘Jim. You can’t wrestle. You have a third-degree concussion.’
Brunzell claimed that despite having the injury he was forced to wrestle that night because they had no substitute:
So, I can’t remember who the agent was who said, ‘He has to work tonight, because we have no substitute.’ We went over and I was working with Hercules, Ray Fernandez, and the doctor told him, ‘The only way that I will let Jim wrestle tonight is if you don’t hit him in the head, slam him, or – in any way – kick him in the head.’
Following this, the WWE Veteran accused WWE of not thinking about head injuries in the early times and said that the lawsuit he has filed is trying to get money as compensation for the injuries:
We agreed and had a pretty decent match, and he got disqualified. But, the reason why I did that, was because there [was] no thought in head injuries during that early time of the [WWE].
And what this lawsuit is trying to get is money from the WWE to put it in a pool to compensate for these guys that might have early dementia, and it’s the same lawsuit that got the four billion dollars from the NFL.”
It's notable here that Jim Brunzell was signed by WWE back in 1985 and he wrestled in a tag team named The Killer Bees for the greater part of his WWE career. However, his WWE stint didn't last long after the split of the tag team and he was released from the company in April 1993.
