- Count Rene Dupree among those who believe the medical details from CM Punk’s interview on Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling podcast. Dupree, a former WWE tag team champion (and in fact the youngest person to win that title), spoke with Slam Wrestling and said he had a similar medical situation come up where a WWE doctor tried to save the company money over a serious health risk.

Dupree, who you may remember from his tag teams with Sylvain Grenier and Rob Conway, told the site that in the fall of 2004 he was suffering from a hematoma in his right temple. He was given the night off of the Smackdown taping and went to fly to Cincinnati, when the hematoma burst. Check out the highlights:

On being given the Smackdown taping off: “They were going to put me in the ring, but then Michael Hayes came around and said, ‘Hey man, can you actually work?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t going to go in the ring, regardless. I had this massive thing on my head. I went in and talked to Stephanie [McMahon], and Stephanie said, ‘No, take the night off.'”

On the hematoma bursting: “The pressure in the cabin changes when you touch down, and the f—ing thing just exploded in the lavatory. It looked like I got shot in the head there was so much blood. I was wearing a white Gold’s Gym t-shirt and it was covered in blood…To [Triple H’s] credit, he stayed with me the whole time, made sure that I was okay and got off the plane. But when the paramedics and EMTs and said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to go to the hospital now, because … you could die.’ Chris Candido had died a few months earlier from a blood clot in his leg — I had one in my f—ing temple. But I could see the trainer, when the EMTs were talking, our trainer was looking at me, shaking his head ‘no’ because it would have cost the company too much money. Basically, that’s what I got [from the trainer].”

On the whole incident: “The way I look at it, I risked my life to save the company a few extra bucks…One time, Johnny Stamboli, he got berated in front of the locker room because he was icing his shoulder — and that’s when I thought, ‘Holy f—.’ That’s one thing my dad always told me too, ‘If you’re hurt, don’t let any of the office see it.’ And that’s coming from a guy from the ’50s. That’s a long tradition in wrestling; if you’re hurt, don’t let the office see it because then they’ll think, ‘Aw, this guy’s not strong enough, he’s not tough enough to hack it.'”

It is a culture that needs to change. Now that the guys are wrestling multiple times a week, they are going to get banged up. That is a reality.

Shit like this should simply not happen in this day and age. Why should professional wrestlers not be offered a similar type of union that other entertainers and sports-people enjoy. It's basic humanity for a company who makes as much money as the WWE to take care of the people that put that money in their pockets. I really feel for the guys. They bust their ass trying to get to the top, then when they get there, the realise they have landed in hell instead of heaven.