He wouldn’t stay down for the count.
Long Island’s Sean Wachter was given only three months to live after doctors discovered stage 4 melanoma that became a malignant brain tumor a decade ago.
“I had a massive stroke that was caused by the golf ball-sized tumor. I had a rare complication called leptomeningeal disease, where the cancer spreads to your spinal fluid,” he told The Post, recalling the darkest days of his life.
Wachter, 40, a wrestling fanatic who played college football and lacrosse at Nassau Community College, was preparing for the worst in what he expected to be his final days.
The Oceanside native often recited a quote by the late sportscaster Stuart Scott, who died of appendiceal cancer in 2015.
“When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live,” the quote goes.
For Wachter, now a married father of two girls, the priority is quality, not quantity of life.
“I was going on 12 weeks to live and I’m going on nine years now,” Wachter, now 40, said of his miracle recovery.
“I’ve been published in a few medical journals as the only documented case in the globe of a complete reversal of leptomeningeal disease.”
Wachter’s agonizing bout with cancer, which came shortly after a construction work-related accident left him temporarily paralyzed, “was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I’ve done more living in the past nine years of my life, and better quality living than I did in the previous 31.”
Rising off the mat
Being bedridden by the illness for months rekindled Wachter’s love of wrestling as he would watch WWE and stream related podcasts.
“It really helped me get through everything,” he said.
Stepping in the ring again represented the realization of a lifelong dream for Wachter.
In high school, he tried covertly becoming a pro wrestler until his father followed him to the Hicksville ring he practiced at one day.
Given the choice — give up wrestling or move out — he opted to quit the sport he loved so he could keep a roof over his head.
Later in life, around 2010, Wachter tried getting back in the ring but was halted by the construction accident — and the three years it took to relearn how to walk.
It was only after beating cancer and ringing the bell at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2022 that Wachter got his fair shake. This time, for a charity match to raise money for pediatric patients at the center.
Keep up with today’s most important news
Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update.
Thanks for signing up!
Having fun and supporting the cause had him content with what was supposed to be it for a lifetime, until one day his daughter said, “‘Daddy, I didn’t get to see you wrestle last summer.’”
“I said, ‘Well, you need to go ask mommy. My wife came up to me and said ‘you get one more.’”
Quickly, Wachter, who now owns New York Wrestling Connection production company and its ring in Deer Park, put together another charity event with the proceeds going to St. Jude.
“I climbed back in the ring, and I had four months of training. We put together a very nice tag team match,” he said.
This time, however, Wachter — known by his wrestling name “The Cancer Fighter” — had his feel-good story echo across the wrestling world.
In the summer of 2024, WWE approached him and brought him out dressed as an NYPD officer to yank wrestlers Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens from the ring at SmackDown to a raucous hometown crowd at Madison Square Garden.
“The night before at 1 a.m. I went into my garage and started crying,” Wachter said. “This is something I wanted since I was a little boy, and thinking about where I was nine years ago, all just hit me.”
Wachter hoped to wrestle more after his triumphant WWE debut.
But a concussion and the reemergence of his cancer — it has since gone back into remission — helped Wachter decide to stay only in the front office nowadays.
In the time since, he’s signed on to be the director of operations for the New York Dragons arena football team — a full circle moment as he got cut from the squad in the mid-2000s.
For Wachter, there is one thing about his journey that matters most.
“I’ll get messages on a daily basis from people telling me, ‘hey, if I didn’t see your story, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed today,’” he said.
“I’d relive my worst day of cancer over and over and over again because it was all worth it just to reach out and touch one person in a positive way.”
