Megabyte Ronnie Opens Up About Back Injury That Led To In-Ring Retirement

On May 11, Megabyte Ronnie took to social media to announce that he had been forced to retire due to a back injury. 

Along with being a pro wrestler, Ronnie is a professional competitive eater who has competed in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest and done eating skits on Being The Elite. Ronnie has competed for BLP, C4, and made appearances on AEW Dark. 

Speaking to Jeremy Lambert & Joel Pearl on In The Weeds, Ronnie discussed his injury and decision to retire. 

“It’s okay. It’s a little bit hard because, for me, I just thought about wrestling as what I was going to do, what I was ultimately wind up doing. I wasn’t ready to give it up, then somebody, my doctor, sort of took it away from me. I don’t know if it’s easier or harder that way to handle when somebody takes it away from you versus when you have to make that decision yourself,” he said. 

He continued, “I think I found out two days before I made the post on Twitter. I’m not good with remembering dates. About two days before that. Basically, what happened is, I have two slipped discs and then I have one crushed disc. What happened was, the crushed disc, the doctor thinks it’s probably been crushed for a long time and I just didn’t know about it. About late January, I was in the gym and I was doing front squats and I heard something pop. Ever since that day, I’ve been having a lot of pain in my back, my hips, and things like that. I knew I was pretty messed up, I didn’t know I was this messed up. When the doctor showed me the x-rays and explained everything to me. I’m in physical therapy right now, but the way the doctor explained things, I’m probably going to wind up needing surgery.”

Elaborating on the potential of surgery, Ronnie said, “Right now, I’m in physical therapy and we’re going to come back to it in about two months. We’re going to see what physical therapy can do for me. I’ve been doing physical therapy for about three weeks and it has helped, but there are still a lot of times where my back gets locked up and I’m not able to move. I’ll just be walking and all of a sudden my back locks up and I can’t move. I wake up every morning in a lot of pain. I feel like it takes two hours for my hips to get going. The thing they explained to me is, once you have back surgery, most people who have it have already had it. I’m trying to go the route of no back surgery. That’s one of the reasons I called it quits on the spot. I don’t want to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

Ronnie was regularly teaming with Matt Brannigan as Hog & Dog on the independent scene before retirement. 

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Watch the full interview with Ronnie in the video above.