Movies - TV
Carl Weathers Dealt With Years Of Excruciating Pain After Happy Gilmore
By TRAVIS YATES
After surviving two seasons of NCAA football and a brief career with the Oakland Raiders, Carl Weathers acted in several action films, including the “Rocky” movies.
Despite the numerous risks to his safety over his career, ironically, a stunt in Adam Sandler’s comedy, “Happy Gilmore,” left the actor’s body irreparably damaged.
In 2020 Weathers told GQ, “It was a blind fall. There are stunt bags, which, maybe are like two feet tall.”
But the bag wasn’t pushed all the way against the wall...”
“So when I went out backward, instead of hitting something flat, my body kind of got trapped, my head on the bags, and my tailbone at the wall, and [it] would crunch on the spine.”
He continued, “I didn’t know it until years later, but I fractured two vertebrae and osteophytes grew out and connected and it did a kind of self-fuse in a really bad place.”
“There were three or four years...I was just in excruciating pain...It was debilitating." And while the pain never fully went away, Weathers refused to let it slow him down.