It has come to light via Lex 18 that a Danville wrestler, Dion Payton is fighting for his life at a UK Hospital after a move he performed sent him into a severe brain hemorrhage, and his fiance and mother share the terrifying moment they witnessed him go unconscious.
Since Wednesday, June 12, Dion Payton has been in the hospital with a ventilator breathing for him as he recovers from a severe brain hemorrhage. Doctors had to cut out a part of his skull to make room for the swelling.
“It was very fast. Very quick response time. Very fast to the hospital. You know, everything went faster than you could even imagine,” recalls Kyla Earles, Payton’s mom.
“It’s soul-crushing, very heartbreaking, very hard,” Samantha Sanders, Payton’s fiance, explains.
Dion, or as people in the wrestling community know him, “Neon Dion”, faced off wrestler “The Masked Superstar” on June 14 at the Boyle County Fair. Sanders recalled how the family wasn’t planning on watching Payton wrestle that night:
“We were gonna go Saturday night, but we thought ‘oh we’ll surprise him’ because he didn’t know we were coming.”
Earles noted how the ending is when it all went south: “Everything went really well until the actual final move.”
A choke-hold slam is what Sanders says Payton’s trainer told her ‘Neon Dion’ performed perfectly.
“Landed. Talked. Rolled over and then went out. Tucked his chin and he landed fine, so we don’t know what caused it,” details Sanders.
“You know, after this, he could have no quality of life. Like he could be one in a million, basically make a recovery,” said Sanders. Sanders and Earles describe him as a friendly, goofy guy who loves his family deeply.
The family created a GoFundMe to help pay for Payton’s medical bills while he remains unconscious in the hospital.
