Wrestling referees are always in constant danger of a rogue punch or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. WWE official Charles Robinson has taken his fair share 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 at the hands of a wrestling legend that he ended up in the hospital for nearly two weeks, and during a recent appearance on Chris Van Vliet's "Insight"podcast, Robinson revealed exactly what happened.
"Randy Savage, elbow, but it wasn't a ref bump, 'I was a worker then,' you know? But that was the worst bump I've taken, the elbow from Randy Savage," Robinson said. "He put me in the hospital for 12 days. It was Ric [Flair] and I against Madusa and Savage, and he came off the top with the elbow, and Ric Flair wasn't going to take the elbow from Savage, so they let 'Lil Natch' take it. Cracked my sternum, collapsed my lung."
Despite his injuries, Robinson didn't know 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 just can't breathe.' Went to my room, two hours later, still can't breathe. Called Jimmy Hart, lifesaver. He called the EMTs, they came to my room, took me to the hospital, [and] said, 'Hey, we need to put you in the hospital.' So that hospital, I won't say which city, they released me the next day to fly home to Charlotte [North Carolina], which, with a collapsed lung, you're not supposed to do that. So I went straight to the hospital. [I] was in 12 days."
Robinson rounded off by saying that Savage called him every day while he was in the hospital to check on him, stating that despite putting him on the shelf for nearly two weeks, Savage was always nice to him and a constant professional backstage.
