How Scream star David Arquette almost died - NEWS.com.au

Scream star David Arquette has an extreme passion that almost cost him his life – professional wrestling.

Two years ago, Arquette faced off against ex-con Nick Gage in a deathmatch, the most hardcore style where the wrestlers swing chairs, baseball bats and the like.

In a video clip of the 2018 match posted to Twitter, things turned gruesome when Gage smashed a fluorescent light tube over Arquette’s head.

With blood gushing from his neck, Arquette got up and tried to pin Gage but couldn’t. He jumped out of the ring, holding his neck. Then, he climbed back in and smacked Gage with a folding chair. After a couple of minutes, though, Arquette was the one getting pinned.

“It nearly cost me my life,” Arquette told the Daily Star of the match. “I was in way over my head. I was about half an inch from death.”

Luckily for Arquette, another fighter in the arena that night was Jack Perry, son of Arquette’s friend actor Luke Perry, who died last year.

Luke went to his friend’s side, assuring Arquette that he wasn’t bleeding to death. He was also the one who took Arquette to hospital.

Arquette told the Daily Star: “I could hear Luke but I couldn’t see him,” Arquette told the Star. “I said: ‘Luke is it pumping?’ because I was worried I was bleeding out and he said: ‘No it’s not pumping.’ I knew at that point I wasn’t dying immediately, I could try to finish the match.”

Arquette has had a lifelong love affair with wrestling, which is traced in a new documentary, You Cannot Kill David Arquette. The film tells of how Arquette has spent the past two decades trying to earn back the respect of the wrestling world – after he won the 2000 World Championship Wrestling heavyweight title as a publicity stunt for his movie Ready To Rumble.

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In those years, 49-year-old Arquette has battled heart problems and drug addiction.

After the Gage match, Arquette’s wife, Christine, told him: “I just feel like you want to die,” the actor recalled.

“I don’t want to die but life is painful,” Arquette told the Daily Star. “If you have addiction issues like I do there’s an element in the back of your head that the addict is literally trying to kill you. You have to find ways to deal with it so you don’t continue to kill yourself, either slowly or quickly.”

For Arquette, wrestling helped him deal with the deaths of Luke Perry, and his transgender sister, Alexis, who died of a heart attack.

“Losing someone is really painful but a few things have happened to make me feel we are all much more connected,” Arquette said.

“For wrestling, you shave everything and at one point I was looking at my arms and it was like I was looking at Alexis’ arms, as being transgender she would shave them … For a second it was like I was looking through Alexis’ eyes … I think we’re a lot more connected than any of us know.”

Through the film, Arquette has finally learned to accept himself.

“I accomplished what I set out to do,” Arquette told the Daily Star. “I wanted to prove I could be a wrestler. And through this whole experience, I figured out – and it’s ironic – I need to stop beating myself up. I had to stop attacking myself and be kind to myself, as corny as it sounds.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

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2020-11-15 20:58:18Z
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