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Jerry Brisco Calls JR...An Update

Posted: Jun 18th 2009 By: CMBurnham

After returning from the Roanoke, Virginia Smackdown taping via Chicago on Wednesday, I finally made it to our backyard to catch up on a little reading when my cell phone rang. I was very surprised to hear who was calling. It was my dear friend Jerry Brisco.

Jerry voice was naturally weak and his speech some what slurred but he was in as good a spirits as one could be after a stressful weekend where he was rushed to the hospital with an unknown ailment on Sunday.

Jerry was preparing to meet Pat Patterson at the Tampa Airport to fly up to Charlotte for the three hour Raw broadcast when he took ill.

Bottom line is this. After getting many of his medical tests back today, it was determined that Jerry did indeed have a stroke and not just one. Jerry had a total of three strokes over the past several days. The doctors now think that one stroke occurred Saturday and the other Sunday morning. They are not sure when Jerry suffered the first stroke. This is all new info confirmed on Wednesday afternoon. It was originally believed that Jerry had not suffered from a stroke but further tests proved otherwise.

While doing a battery of tests, doctors also discovered a small hole in Brisco's heart and a heart valve issue that will now be repaired next week, likely on Thursday. This procedure will be done via his groin as to make it less evasive and the doctors are highly confident that this issue will be addressed completely with the medical procedure.

The doctors are waiting until next week to do the surgery to allow new medication to begin taking affect that addresses the clogged artery in Jerry's neck.

Jerry has regained the strength in his left hand and was having no significant issues with his left side Wednesday which was not the case on Sunday.

Jerry is confident, as am I, that he will make a full recovery as he has been an athlete all his life and has never been a smoker, isn't overweight, is in excellent physical shape for a man a little north of 60 who was still working out on the mat with his amateur wrestling team at a high school in Tampa where he volunteers.

When I had the privilege of managing the WWE talent roster, Jerry Brisco was the key individual who helped assemble some amazing talents that are still competing with WWE today on a high level. Jerry's ability to recruit these young men was incredible. Any success I was ever able to attain was always via a team effort and Jerry Brisco was the key man on the team.

Medication should address Jerry's stroke issues, along, perhaps, with a reduced work load, and the heart procedure, while serious, is less evasive and considered more routine than many heart surgeries.

I will assure everyone this; Jerry Brisco is a fighter and a man of conviction and determination who will unquestionably defeat this foe. In a business often times short on compliments, I have never heard one person say a negative world about Jerry Brisco in a WWE locker room. Jerry Brisco has earned the respect of all of us who are lucky enough to call him a friend and has earned his distinction of being a WWE Hall of Famer many times over.

Now, Jerry Brisco deserves to be in your thoughts and your prayers as the native Oklahoman, who attended Oklahoma State University on a wrestling scholarship, goes to the mat one more time against a challenging adversary.

J.R.

Tags: Jim Ross, Jerry Brisco, Pat Patterson, WWE