Movies - TV
Happy Gilmore Left Carl Weathers In Excruciating Pain
By TRAVIS YATES
After surviving two seasons of NCAA football and a brief professional career with the Oakland Raiders, Carl Weathers became an actor and starred in several action films, including the “Rocky” movies. Despite the numerous risks to his safety over his career, it was ironically his role in Adam Sandler’s comedy, “Happy Gilmore,” that left the actor’s body irreparably damaged.
Weathers explained how a stunt left him in excruciating pain: “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 so it just would crunch on the spine.”
The actor hid the injury when it happened but later shared, “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.” Although the doctors couldn’t fix the damage, the injury hasn’t stopped Weathers’ career, with the 75-year-old directing and acting in “The Mandalorian.”