3. He Missed A Lot Of Time Due To A Freak Gym Accident
Looking at Val Venis during his muscular peak in the late 90s and early 2000s, it's clear to see that the guy put in the hours at the gym. The porn star gimmick wouldn't have worked very well if Val had been out-of-shape and he knew it. The guy looked like the lived in the gym at times. But the gym, like the ring, can be a dangerous place. It's pretty easy to pick up an injury by overextending or lifting too heavy in the gym, especially when you're pumping the amount of iron that somebody like Val obviously did. But while picking up an injury while lifting might be a concern, Val wouldn't have even imagined he'd be involved in an accident like he was in July 2002. During a workout, a lat pulldown machine failed and fell down on top of him. Explaining just what happened, Val said:
From what I understand, the bolts that were securing it to the floor had rusted enough to the point that when I was pulling the stack, and the bolts snapped, and the entire thing with the 300 pounds up in the air, snapped and fell on to my head...I just remember getting to the third or fourth rep, and then it was lights out. I remember a whole bunch of the other members of the gym trying to pull the machine off me, and my wife standing just above me screaming. I was probably out cold for a full 20 or 30 seconds.
Although there were initially fears that Venis could have suffered some sort of spinal damage, he was able to return after eight weeks. It could have been a lot worse.
