Bam Margera says he was ‘basically pronounced dead’ after battle with pneumonia

It sounds as though Bam Margera was in even greater dire straights than previously believed when it was reported that he was “fighting for his life” in a San Diego, California hospital last month. As the 43-year-old Jackass star told his old pal Steve-O on his Wild Ride! podcast this week, he very nearly lost that battle.

“Well rock and roll, we have a lot to talk about because I was basically pronounced dead on Elvis’s birthday, Dec. 8,” Margera told Steve-O, when it was revealed that he was the first third-time guest on the podcast.

“Did not know that I had like, gnarly Covid, my body was shutting down and I went into four seizures, and each one lasting 10 to 20 minutes and on the fourth one, I bit my tongue so hard, it was like, nearly falling off,” he explained. “It was swollen and puffy and wouldn’t fit in my mouth and I was drinking infected blood, which gave me pneumonia as well. So when the shaman took me to the hospital I went on my fifth seizure, I couldn’t breathe without a tube down my throat.”

“So I woke up five days later thinking I was there for a couple hours — like, dude you’ve been here for nearly a week,” Margera continued. “We tried to take the tube out and you weren’t breathing on your own. So I spent eight days in there, and dude when they took that tube out I felt like I sucked on Darth Vader’s d—k. I had to spit tea and f—king lozenges all the live long day.”

Revealing that his heart had actually stopped beating, Margera told Steve-O and his cohost Scott Randolf that he didn’t have a near-death experience, but just “blacked out.”

But as Steve-O recalled at the time, he was legitimately worried that this was going to be it for Bam.

“Now, this was not a secret, this was on TMZ like, as soon as it happened,” he said. “And, I can tell you that for me, seeing Bam on a ventilator, meaning you can’t breathe by yourself … you’re in the intensive care unit in critical but stable condition — I’m just thinking, ‘Oh my God, like this is it.’ And what’s terrible is that my first legitimate thought was, ‘F—king Bam better not die dude, it’s gonna ruin my tour, it’s going to ruin everything!'”

Well, if anyone can be brutally honest with you, it’s your closest friends. And hopefully from here on out, Margera stays on track with his health and recovery.