Benny The Backrower Opens Up On Neck Injury
Predominately NSW competing Pro Wrestler Benny the Back Rower was seriously injured during a match on Saturday 15th July. Benny, in the fourth year of his wrestling career sustained a neck injury with a fracture to the C5 vertebrae, which is high load bearing and provides flexibility and support to much of the neck and head. It is an injury that will immediately in Benny’s own words, force him “into medical retirement.”
Speaking on ‘Shooting The Sh%t Uncensored’ with Piers Austin Benny opened up about the injury and the moments he knew something went wrong.
“I was absolutely shitting myself, I knew something was wrong, I felt the crack I heard it, the instant pain I was like this isn’t good. The first thing I did was close my hands to make sure I could still move, wiggled my feet a bit. So I’ve still got movement, I’ve still got feeling that’s a positive. If you watch the clip you’ll notice I’ve already said something to him straight away because the way he covers me it was very very soft, you can see he kind of grabbed my head to stabilise me a bit.”
“You know he probably felt bad straight away knowing that it didn’t go to plan.”
Benny on taking the manoeuvre that caused the injury..
“So I’d never taken a Vertebreaker before but obviously I’ve seen it, I was confident in my ability to do it, to get myself into the right position, I watched Kobra do it on someone that day, because he done it to show me. After watching I was like yeah I can do that. The difference between when he showed me and when he done it to me was he didn’t go as quick, he got old mate up and held him up for a minute and old mate had time to adjust where he was to where he needed to be.”
“It was just very rushed, if I had the time to adjust myself we probably wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation. It was just very rushed. I’m not sure if he panicked thinking that I wasn’t going to get where I needed to be and he just sort of went to try and salvage it, it didn’t feel right from the get go.”
Hindsight being 2020 Piers went on to ask Benny if he would perform a manoeuvre he hasn’t practiced at training before…
“No. That was probably the harshest way to learn that lesson. Its not just ended my career its changed how I’m going to live the rest of my life.”
Benny went on to talk about details of the injury and what life looks like once the injury has healed..
“At the moment I have a weight lift limit, I’m not allowed to lift over 5 kilos. I’d imagine that will probably stay in tact for a while due to ligament damage that’s been done as well. There are fractures to the C4 and C5, they fused the C4,C5 and C6 together and there’s also ligament damage down the left side”
“Once I heal up apart from not being able to wrestle again and not being able to do sports and stuff, I’ve really come out of this relatively unscathed. Once this heals up I’ll still be able to go to the park with my kids, I’ll still be able to work for the most part, I’ll still be able to do most things I was able to do.”
“For this to be an eye opener I think its a pretty lucky situation because my life is going to go back relativity back to normal once I’ve healed up. So I’ve been very lucky with that and I also feels its been very lucky for Australian wrestling. If it was worse it probably would have caught the attention of authorities and news and stuff like that, Australian wrestling would be a harder place to be involved in.”
We at PW Downunder hope a positive out of this terrible situation is that it can bring a better focus on standards of professional wrestling in NSW. We wish Camron all the best with his recovery.
The Gofundme link to support Camron AKA Benny can be found here
