At this point, Stephen Amell may be known just as much for his love of pro wrestling as his eight season run as Oliver Queen on "Arrow," or his polarizing views on last year's SAG-AFTRA strike. Not only has Amell incorporated his wrestling fandom into his acting career, starring in the Starz show "Heels," but he's also gotten in the ring three times, once for WWE, once for Ring of Honor, and then at the famous All In event in 2018, where he wrestled Christopher Daniels.
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But regardless of whether it was for a wrestling match or for "Heels," wrestling hasn't entirely agreed with Amell. During an appearance on "Insight with Chris Van Vliet," Amell detailed some of the injuries he's suffered indulging his wrestling hobby, including one he suffered at the outset of "Heels."
"On the first day of shooting wrestling stuff, the first thing I did was a coast to coast," Amell said. "And so we shot it, and now retrospectively, I easily could've put a mat down onto the ground, or just the way that they shot it, where I could land on my feet, but then we could do one where I land on the mat. So I did it...I didn't clear as much of the ring as I wanted to, I didn't go as far as I wanted to. So I did it again, and I jumped too far, and I landed sitting straight up and down, and knew something was wrong immediately. It was a compression fracture of my T10 and my L1. First day of wrestling training, I broke my back."
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Amell's two attempts at the coast to coast weren't the first time he had tried the move, as he had previously hit it on Daniels during their All In match. Unfortunately, as Amell revealed, that attempt didn't go much better than "Heels" attempts would.
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"When I did the coast to coast at All In, I didn't realize it at the time that I figured 'Okay, I don't want to smack the back of my head,'" Amell said. "'So at the last minute, I'm going to bail out and just try to land on my left butt...We finished the match, and I'm back in there in the locker room, and I can't figure it out...it feels like someone put a tennis ball under my left hip," Amell said. "And I actually got a text from the Big Show and he goes 'That coast to coast looked pretty stiff man.' I was like 'Well, maybe it might've been.' Anyways, I fractured my hip. And I had to go right back to filming Arrow' after the Tuesday of this long weekend."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
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