Wrestling referees are all the time in constant danger of a rogue punch or just being within the mistaken place on the mistaken time. WWE official Charles Robinson has taken his fair proportion of bumps, even before his time in WWE when he was portrayed as “Lil Natch” in WCW. It was in WCW where Robinson took such a nasty bump by the hands of a wrestling legend that he ended up within the hospital for nearly two weeks, and through a recent appearance on Chris Van Vliet’s “Insight” podcast, Robinson revealed exactly what happened.
“Randy Savage, elbow, nevertheless it wasn’t a ref bump, ‘I used to be a employee then,’ ? But that was the worst bump I’ve taken, the elbow from Randy Savage,” Robinson said. “He put me within the hospital for 12 days. It was Ric [Flair] and I against Madusa and Savage, and he got here off the highest with the elbow, and Ric Flair wasn’t going to take the elbow from Savage, so that they let ‘Lil Natch’ take it. Cracked my sternum, collapsed my lung.”
Despite his injuries, Robinson didn’t understand how bad his condition was until he went back to his hotel room and struggled to breathe, leading him to call a WWE Hall of Famer who saved his life.
“Two hours later, I went to my room. I said ‘Man, I simply cannot breathe.’ Went to my room, two hours later, still cannot breathe. Called Jimmy Hart, lifesaver. He called the EMTs, they got here to my room, took me to the hospital, [and] said, ‘Hey, we want to place you within the hospital.’ In order that hospital, I won’t say which city, they released me the following day to fly home to Charlotte [North Carolina], which, with a collapsed lung, you are not speculated to try this. So I went straight to the hospital. [I] was in 12 days.”
Robinson rounded off by saying that Savage called him on daily basis while he was within the hospital to examine on him, stating that despite putting him on the shelf for nearly two weeks, Savage was all the time nice to him and a continuing skilled backstage.