WWE superstar Keith Lee posted a YouTube video on Thursday afternoon, revealing the reason he had been off of TV for the past few months was due to contracting COVID and suffering related heart issues.
“Let’s talk about my time since January,” he said, before detailing, in the 6-minute video, the chain of events that resulted him in being pulled from the Elimination Chamber event in February, and off TV until late July when he returned to RAW for a pair of matches against Karrion Kross.
“As some of you know,” he said, “towards the end of January, I missed about three weeks on TV. At that time, I had contracted COVID.”
“After that I came back for one match against Mr. Riddle, I believe that was February 8. And then the next day, I got a call saying there was something off in my blood. Some people may have explained experienced this thing where there’s an inflammation in the heart or lungs. For me was the heart.”
For the next few months, Lee said he faced a number of MRI tests, and he was prohibited from physically exerting himself for fear of risking death.
“I was basically forbidden from training or any activity outside of a light walk. There was a fear that doing more than that, there was a chance that I could up and pass away.”
“This became a fight against death so to speak. It took up until the company sent me to Pittsburgh to get looked at, and it was to the point where I was about to undergo genetic testing and all sorts of things because it was thought that there was potential I could have heart disease of sorts.”
“Very fortunately,” he continued, “even though it took a long time, we waited… (and) that allowed the inflammation in my heart to eventually go down to normal. Even though the first MRI was bad and the second one was worse, over time, things got better here and there and eventually after that visit I was cleared to try and get back into some sort of shape. (Laughs) That’s with a real struggle is.”
In the video, Lee took time to address some of the internet speculation that he contracted COVID from his fiancée, NXT performer Mia Yim. Calling those remarks rude and disturbing, Lee stressed that she didn’t give him COVID, but rather the opposite.
Yim and Lee (from Yim’s Twitter account @MiaYim)
“Let me clear that up right now,” he stressed. “I contracted COVID. She did not, for actually about three weeks. And the only reason she did contract it was because she refused to not be there and take care of me. And, unfortunately, that ended up costing her an opportunity in the Royal Rumble. That was a chance she was willing to take.”
“At the end of the day, I am grateful to her and it’s unfortunate that some of you are ungrateful, because the reality is there’s no telling how telling how things would’ve gone without her assistance.”
Lee didn’t appear on this past Monday’s episode of RAW, though no storyline or real-life explanation was provided on TV. In the video, he didn’t comment on his absence or provide any insight as to when he may return.
“At the end of the day, I don’t really know what’s next. The idea for me is that I fought the battle that mattered the most and I’m healthy. That’s all I can really ask for, that’s all my family can ask for.”
“And now, we fight to make the most of what we can do in this industry and just move forward. That’s what I always say: forward march. The grind continues, its forever. We fought death; I don’t mind fighting anybody else. We move forward. And I guess we continue to show exactly what it means to be ‘Limitless’.”