Dean Ambrose Says He ‘Nearly Died’ After Triceps Surgery

Dean Ambrose said in an interview Friday that he “nearly died” from complications following surgery to repair his torn triceps tendon.

So that’s why it took him so long to get back to TV.

Ambrose made the shocking revelation in an interview with The Monitor, explaining that his much-longer-than-anticipated recovery was “one nightmare after another”:

I ended up having two different surgeries. I had this MRSA, Staph infection. I nearly died. I was in the hospital for a week plugged up to this antibiotic drip thing, and I was on all these antibiotics for months that make you puke and crap your pants.

Again: that definitely explains why it took Ambrose eight months to get back to TV.

Ambrose also said the situation was so dicey that at one point he worried he’d completely lost mobility in his triceps:

But for a minute there, it was getting scary. By the time I got that second surgery, it was March, I think. My arm was so shrunken and skeletal that it was weird. I hadn’t been able to move it or flex it in so long that I was starting to get scared I wasn’t ever going to get it back. To go from not being able to eat my Froot Loops, to being able to get back in the ring and throw people around and throw punches and do everything back to normal, it was a very gratifying feeling.

This could explain why Ambrose’s wife, newly minted Raw commentator Renee Young, missed Raw back in March. At the time she alluded that she had to “shelf herself” because she was sick, but the tweet was cryptic enough that, in hindsight, she could have been referring to Ambrose:

Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised if WWE went above and beyond to make sure that Ambrose was 100% healthy before he returned to TV. After all, it was a staph infection that ultimately set off the defamation lawsuit between CM Punk and WWE senior ringside physician Dr. Chris Amann – a lawsuit that Punk won.

Nevertheless, the WWE Universe is glad that Ambrose is back, healthy, and more jacked than ever. Perhaps WWE will throw him a bone at Hell in a Cell on Sunday and give him a title for his troubles.