On a recent episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, 2021 WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff revealed that he almost died twice during a recent health scare, as a result of attempting to change his diet.
Here’s what the former WCW President said:
“I’m hypoglycemic, meaning if I have a candy bar, I’ll pass out. I’m reading about all this stuff and one of the things I read was using a supplement like Metamucil or, in this case, I used psyllium husks.
So, I’m thinking I’m going to add these psyllium husks to my repertoire.
I’m looking at the directions and it says ‘Recommended one to three tablespoons’. And I’m going ‘Well, that’s for the average person’.
Since I spent 30 years in the wrestling business, I know that if one to three is good for the average person that I need a minimum of four to five, because that’s how that works.
That’s where I stopped, I didn’t read the rest of the directions, especially the important part that said ‘Don’t start out with a maximum dose right away, work your way up to it’.
I get up, go to the bathroom, and I’m passing buckets of blood, like lots of it.
So, now they are having a discussion with me about how much of my intestines they are going to surgically remove, and give me a little bag.
And I’m going ‘Oh no, we’re not doing anything’ but the doctor was pretty serious.
I had used up all of the blood they had at the hospital or in the county where I live in.
So, they put me in a helicopter and life-flighted me up to Billings, Montana because they had better equipment and experienced surgeons up there and all that kind of stuff.
It was a complete mystery. And I’m thinking ‘It’s not a mystery, I know exactly what happened. I took those three big heaping tablespoons of psyllium’.
The lining of your intestines are so vascular that it heals very, very quickly so over the course of 24 hours, whatever I tore up healed and now with all the tests they had, they couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me.
But I knew, I told the doctor, I said ‘I’m pretty sure’ because it was the only thing that I did differently.
The doctor did tell me, he said ‘You almost died twice, you almost died in Cody and you almost died here’.”
Eric Bischoff started as an announcer and interviewer for Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association (AWA) from 1986 until 1991 before he joined Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling in ’91 to do the same, but eventually became the Senior Vice President, who was in charge of WCW during the famous Monday Night Wars of the 90s.
After WCW was sold to Vince McMahon, Eric was brought to WWE as the General Manager of the Monday Night RAW brand, a position he held from July 2002 to December 2005.
Some of the younger fans will also remember him as an on-screen character for Dixie Carter’s Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) between 2010 and 2012.
