Teddy Long remembers being in the ring when Droz suffered a ring accident

In an interview with Chris Van Vliet for Insight (via Wrestling Inc), Teddy Long talked about the in-ring accident that left Droz (Darren Drozdov) paralyzed from the neck down. It happened during a SmackDown taping on October 5, 1999. Long was the referee for Droz’s match against D’Lo Brown. Droz died last year.

He said: “D’Lo, I think he had – it was a complete accident – D’Lo, I think he had oiled himself up or something, he put a little too much oil on that night because a lot of people do that. Tony Atlas, a lot of people always oil themselves up. As far as I can remember, D’Lo was trying to lift Droz up to do something, like a piledriver, but somehow Droz slipped out of his hands. Like I said, I don’t know how it happened, I just looked and the next thing I knew, Droz was on the ground. I’ll never forget, I went over because that was the first time I’d ever seen that, you know, an accident like that that actually happened. So I look over at Droz, Droz looks up at me and says, “Teddy, Teddy, I’m dying, I’m dying.” I remember the words coming out of his mouth, I’m really scared now because I don’t know what to do. They wear headsets, talk to me and I give them the (X) signal to show them that this is real. As I said, this was the first time I experienced this too. It was pretty shocking.“