In 1996 Carl Weathers took his career in a different direction, branching off into comedy with the Adam Sandler movie “Happy Gilmore.” In the film, Weathers played one-handed former golf pro, Chubbs Peterson, who lost his hand to an alligator (a possible homage to the ridiculous “Predator” scene where Weathers’ character has his arm blown off).
Despite all the crazy action sequences in his action films, it was a stunt in the goofy Sandler golf movie that left the actor in excruciating pain. In 2020 Weathers told GQ what went wrong with the stunt. The actor said:
“It was a blind fall. There are stunt bags, which, maybe are like two feet tall. But the bag wasn’t pushed all the way against the wall, so when I went out backward instead of hitting something flat, my body kind of got trapped, my head on the bags, and my tailbone at the wall, and so it just would crunch on the spine. I felt the pain and the burning sensation immediately. But again, I’m an athlete, I’m tough, I’m an actor, let’s keep going. And after about three or more of those, I said, ‘No more of that.'”
The scene was likely when Chubbs fell out of a window after the reappearance of the alligator that ate his hand. Despite the hilarity of the scene and the untimely on-screen death of Chubbs, the accident left Weathers in terrible pain for years.