WWE Superstar Dean Ambrose ‘Nearly Died’ From Surgery Complications

WWE superstar Dean Ambrose said he “nearly died” after suffering complications during what was supposed to be a routine surgery for a torn triceps tendon.

Ambrose, whose real name is Jonathan David Good, was initially told he would only need three to four months to recover from the surgery. Unfortunately, doctors later discovered the injury was worse than they thought, so he needed six months to recover. Six weeks later, doctors said he needed another surgery for an infection.

“It was just one nightmare after another,” Ambrose told The Monitor. “It was a pretty challenging period of time to go through. 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.”

Ambrose said his arm and triceps were not healing as they should have. At first, he thought he had “Dusty elbows,” which usually go away. But it turned out it was much worse.

“I thought it was, we call it Dusty elbows. It’s a pretty typical wrestler thing,” the 32-year-old explained. “You just get this bursa sac of fluid on your elbow from banging it on the mat or whatever. I’ve had that dozens of times on both elbows. It usually just goes away. It was kind of disguised. By the time I finally went and got the first surgery, my triceps was already starting to atrophy and look weird. I wasn’t able to flex my triceps for a really long time. And then the first surgery didn’t really, something went wrong in the process. Probably due to that infection.”

The infection also puzzled Ambrose, since he had no idea how he got it. He said the doctors thought they cleaned it out during the first surgery, but six weeks later, doctors said his injury was not healing correctly. He went back for a check-up and was sure he was going to be heading home right afterwards. Instead, he had to move to Birmingham to rehab and be near his doctors.

“I just stayed there for two and a half or three months until they felt like I was pretty good. Once the MRSA really got out of my system, I was working out twice a day. Rehabbing twice a day on top of that in Birmingham. Doing everything possible to try to get my arm working again, and once I started to come back, I started to make a lot of progress over the summer,” Ambrose told The Monitor. “So I’m feeling good now.”

Ambrose was missing from WWE matches from December 2017 until last month. He made his return during the Aug. 13 episode of Raw to help Seth Rollins with his feud with Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler. Ambrose also has 20 lbs of new muscle.

Ambrose will join Rollins again Sunday for the Raw Tag Team Championships at Hell in a Cell.