Mark Wheeler Reveals That He Wrestled ROH Match With Torn Achilles, ‘No One Knew I Was Hurt’
Mark Wheeler recalls wrestling for Ring Of Honor.
In June 2023, Wheeler made his debut for the company in a tag match, teaming with Vikram Prashar to face the La Faccion Ingobernable duo of Preston Vance and Dralistico.
As it turns out, Wheeler worked the entire match with a torn Achilles. Speaking with Jeremy Lambert and Joel Pearl of Fightful Overbooked for a new interview, Wheeler revealed that he didn’t tell anyone about the injury.
“When I wrestled for Ring of Honor, funny story, I did my best ever kayfabe. I did it with a torn Achilles ankle and I didn’t tell anybody. I had a full off the bone tear. It happened like a week prior. I didn’t want to cancel because I’m stubborn. It was my last match before I took time off. The surgeon told me it couldn’t get any worse, so I said, ‘Okay.’ I just wrapped it up and went to the tapings. I tried to fake not limping, which was horrible all day, for 12 hours. I wrestled a tag match. Thankfully, it was only three or four minutes, but I couldn’t really run. I had no calf muscle. It wasn’t attached. I did it. It really hurt, but it was cool because when I came back to Gorilla, no one knew I was hurt and no one said anything. I was like, ‘Wow, good job, Mark.’ It was stupid and surgery was awful and it sucked. I was out for eight or nine months. It was fun. We wrestled a very easy match. It was a squash match, so it was quick, but to be in Toronto at Ring of Honor. Just looking around, I was like, I remember coming to this arena and watching SmackDown or Raw,’ so it was cool being there. It kind of killed the moment having one good leg [laughs].”
Elsewhere in the interview, Wheeler talked about getting to work with Steve Corino in Alpha-1 Wrestling. Check out his full comments here.
Fans can check out Fightful Overbooked’s full interview with Mark Wheeler in the video linked at the top of this article.