Gangrel Reveals He Burned His Groin & Crushed His Foot During His First Entrance

During a guest appearance on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Gangrel spoke about his entrance, which saw him raising from the floor through a ring of fire and walking to the ring with a glass of blood.

Speaking on the first time the entrance happened, Gangrel said this:

“The very first time I did it, we did a dry run. I get there and they came up with this entrance and it was really cool. They said, ‘Watch the lift, it has a shimmy in it. So you gotta wait for it to shimmy and then walk.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, cool.’ I did the dry rehearsal and there was no smoke, the flames didn’t seem as high, it wasn’t dark, and there was nobody in the arena so you were quite aware of it. When we went to go live and do it, the elevator comes up, I see all the people, you just get brought into that moment. I feel the shim but I thought the elevator stopped so I turned to go walk off stage left off the elevator and through the fire and my foot went in between the lift and the stage. So it didn’t come all the way up yet, so it clamped down on my foot.

"Perfect timing, so I was stuck and I had flames up in my balls. That’s my very first entrance and it crushed my foot. My foot was – I didn’t tell anybody – my foot was black for three or four months. It was just horrible looking. That’s why I ended up with that gangster limp that I had coming down because my foot got caught and smashed so I had that limp coming down. I was still so damn happy that I didn’t care that my foot was crushed. That’s how that whole walk came about, the whole stagger step. I still walk like that today because I got the jimmy leg now but it started with my foot caught in that elevator because I didn’t look down coming up. I was sitting there literally and the fire was coming up in my crotch and I was pointing down calling, ‘Hey, hey!’ I felt like such an idiot, but it was taped so they cut. You don’t see it but the pyro guys, they ribbed me for a year about that.”