And that's not even the full rundown of the injuries he had.
By its own nature, Professional Wrestling, at its core, is still a contact sport, even when the outcome of the matches are predefined. Wrestlers, after all, are human beings, putting their bodies on the line for the sake of entertaining their audiences, and taking dangerous bumps and participating in certain matches with dangerous stipulations usually end up with them risking their lives and health, even when everything goes OK. The insane amount of damage a wrestler can take during their matches eventually leads them to retire or even die, especially if (as many examples show) some of them also compete on other contact-based sports such as Mixed Martial Arts. Do Not Try This at Home!- André the Giant is known to have suffered from acromegaly, a condition where he continued to grow in adulthood due to an overactive pituitary gland. This caused the natural rigors of professional wrestling to take a particularly hard toll on him. In 1987, he had surgery on his lower back to relieve the pain of his past injuries, but this robbed him of a lot of his strength. As a result, when he filmed The Princess Bride, he needed physical support to do a lot of the feats attributed to his character, Fezzik. He did very little himself in wrestling appearances in his final years; in his last appearances with the WWF, they even wrote in his infirmity, with the crutches he used to get around frequently used as weapons (though usually by others around him; at this point, he was typically depicted as a Gentle Giant/Badass Bystander face). He ultimately died in 1993 from congestive heart failure, another side effect of his acromegaly.
- Kurt Angle's complaints about broken freakin' necks? Very much legitimate, and they didn't go away after he left the WWE. There's one seemingly legitimate photo of him in a wheelchair at a TNA UK show
, unrelated to the wheelchair skit he once did, which might indicate how much excruciating pain he must have suffered throughout the entire time. - After just two years of using her Rack Attack finisher, Nikki Bella of the Bella Twins required surgery for neck and back problems and was urged to pick a different finisher or else she'll just keep damaging them. Even after her recovery, she only wrestled on a part-time basis, finally retiring in 2019 after discovering a cyst in her brain.
- Repeated head injuries as part of his Signature Move may have been one of the causes behind Chris Benoit's increasingly erratic behaviour and eventual mental breakdown and murder-suicide. He may have had a history of steroid abuse and been taking testosterone tablets for its long-term side effects. After his death, studies showed that his brain had significant degradation, and certain proteins that are most commonly found in elderly Alzheimer's patients. He also wasn't helped by nagging neck injuries and severe emotional stress since the death of best friend Eddie Guerrero (among others), as well as coming very close to a second divorce. Also, his heart was reportedly in such bad shape that the experts predicted that he would have died within a few months anyway.
- Big Show has acromegaly much like André the Giant (and for a brief period, wrestled as André's Kayfabe son). Although Show had surgery on his pituitary gland to slow down his growth, the effects still showed in his later career. He also had gained a bunch of weight, which stopped him from being able to do many of the moves that got him over in WCW, forcing him to wrestle a slower, more plodding style. In 2008, he started doing the chokeslam less often due to knee and back issues (and when he did use it, he modified it so that he no longer drops to his knees) and began using a simple right hook as his primary finishing move.
- Wayne Bridges of Universal Wrestling Federation underwent serious spinal surgery in a double operation, each taking 7 hours, but the nervous system was damaged beyond repair and although the pain factor has been removed, the nerves have never re-grown, leaving him struggling to walk or stand up straight for any length of time.
- Daniel Bryan wrestled his final match in May 2015 and after continuously being refused clearance to wrestle from WWE's doctors, he announced his retirement in February 2016 due to the multiple concussions he has sustained over time (after just a few months in the business, he already had three concussions), thankfully preventing another Benoit-case from happening. However, this would only be a 10-Minute Retirement as he would be medically cleared to return to wrestling two years later.
- Even managers aren't immune to this, Jim Cornette's knees are basically shot after tearing both his ACLs (though not at the same time) and having multiple knee surgeries. He also has neck issues from Yokozuna muffing a legdrop and sitting on his head, and pretty bad tinnitus (hearing damage) from his time in the Impact Zone, which he likened to "shooting off pyro in a broom closet."
- Towards the end of Ramon Dekkers's career, he was so injured he couldn’t train, his left ankle having been surgically fused because of repeated breakages.
- A consequence of Tommy Dreamer's ring style. When he broke his back in ECW, an X-ray revealed that he had also been (unknowingly) wrestling with a broken neck for several months. Other injuries include more broken fingers than a person has fingers, several groin injuries that required fluid draining from his testicles (ouch), and numerous concussions. Despite all of this, he appears to be in relatively good shape.
- The pioneering high flying style of Dynamite Kid, coupled with years of drug and steroid abuse, took an incredible toll on his body. By 1988, his body was already torn to shreds and, in one of his last WWF matches, he had to be literally carried down the aisle by Smith, just to get into the ring. Billington's "comeback" match in 1996 was a complete flop, as it was painfully obvious he was in no-condition to compete in-ring on regular basis anymore. His left leg was paralyzed and he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, passing away in 2018.
- Edge had to retire in 2011 due to multiple injuries, particularly chronic neck injuries. It got to a point where simply working a match would be risking his mobility, if not his life. He would be cleared to return to the ring in 2020.
- At the end of her life, Mountain Fiji of GLOW was bedridden and confined to a wheelchair due to her injuries and other health issues.
- Mick Foley is another prime example. Never the most physically intimidating specimen, he was more than willing to go through the most hardcore matches imaginable. The toll those early years took on him are evident to this day, and he once described a trip to the doctor: "He told me that I'm in my thirties, but I have the skeleton of an eighty-year-old." He is so bad now that he can't even tie his own shoes (though ironically, his somewhat doughy physique probably provided enough protection to extend his career, considering the kind of bumps he took). Heck, the back of his first book, Have a Nice Day (pictured above), lists all of his various injuries up to that point. Bear in mind, that book was written fourteen years before he retired. Thankfully, while he'll never get into the ring again, his yoga therapy under Diamond Dallas Page has allowed him to regain quite a bit of his mobility.
- As the WWECW commentators loved to remind us, Francine "broke her nose, broke her ribs, broke her pelvis", and never missed a day of work — even when her paycheck bounced. As a result, though, don't expect her to take any bumps nowadays.
- Injuries and general battle wear reduced Kazuyuki Fujita's legendary toughness. When he was forced to face Satoshi Ishii many years past his prime, he was a shell of himself.
- GARUDA was accepted into Michinoku Pro Wrestling as a possible big player, but his irregular training and chronically injured neck impeded him from breaking out.
- From the late 80's until his death in 2023, "Superstar" Billy Graham's body was a wreck. Graham is the earliest example of what doing drugs, let alone steroids, can do to a person.
- You'll notice that during Bret Hart's brief run in 2010 he didn't do any actual wrestling moves. He can't. He's taken so many concussions of such severity that he is medically banned from wrestling, lifting weights, or flying in planes. He also suffered a stroke in the early 2000s.
- Hayabusa, of UWF fame, had to change his lucha libre style to a more mat-based style due to the many injuries he suffered.
- Mach Hayato of Universal Wrestling Federation was an injury-prone wrestler; he retired after the UWF demise because he believed himself to be too age-worn to keep the level.
- Hulk Hogan has endured significant damage to his knees, hips and especially his spine over the years. Regarding his spine, he had scoliosis that went untreated until he was in his fifties note . It was worsened by his leg drop finishing move, long-term steroid abuse, and the sheer length of his career (over 30 years). He's had both knees and both hips replaced along with numerous spinal operations that have left him unable to wrestle again, and have even resulted in him losing several inches of heightnote . For this reason, "matches" with Hogan in TNA consisted of bad guys running into his fists at full-force while he stood there like a turret.
- Kamala was forced to retire in November 2011, due to having one of his legs amputated because of diabetes complications. In April 2012, his right leg was amputated. He finally passed away in 2020, at the age of 70.
- When Hiromitsu Kanehara left PRIDE in 2005, he was a shell of himself after pushing his body to its limits and taking beatdowns for most of his career.
- Becky Levi, of UWF fame, has aches and pains from several procedures she has undergone which include four knee surgeries, including a knee replacement, and multiple spinal fusions.
- Lex Luger had a spinal stroke in the mid-00s that left him unable to walk for a few years and caused him to drop down to around 150 pounds.
- The series of injuries that British wrestler Kid Lykos sustained during his career eventually caught up to him and forced him to retire.
- Jimmy Rave developed a staph infection in his left arm which required it to be amputated. The infection then developed into MRSA which also cost him his legs, and eventually his life.
- Long before his retirement, Akira Maeda's body had broken down after years of fighting. He required a hand from the young fighters to walk back to the locker room and was always limping. Even so, he tried to fight Rickson Gracie to avenge Takada's loss.
- Matilda the Hun, also of GLOW fame, due to years of spinal issues, is also mostly confined to a wheelchair (but at the time of the documentary was seemingly mobile enough to get into a pool and walk and stand for short periods of time) and needed toes on one of her feet amputated due to nerve damage.
- By the late 90's, Mitsuharu Misawa's body was very beaten up, and he often had to take long absences from the ring in order to heal up, and a big part of why he resisted a third run as GHC Heavyweight champ was the toll the 20+ minute matches took on his body. His effort to keep his company going strong ended up costing him his life.
- There's a reason SHIMMER's second champion, MsChif, wrestled in a pair of DonJoys. Years of Gateway's signature Light Heavyweight Fatal Four Ways had done her legs few favors and that extra support let her tough out two years as champion of Shimmer and the NWA World Women's division.
- After all the damage sustained from his pro wrestling and fighting careers, Takehiro Murahama of Pro Wrestling ZERO1 should have retired from the latter in 2004, but he kept fighting. He would have avoided many losses had he done it.
- For a wrestler his size, Kevin Nash still looks good, pretty ripped, and since his face hasn't aged much since his WCW days, he could actually pass for a lot younger when he colors his hair, but he's still carrying plenty of injuries and has trouble being on his feet for long periods of time. Infamously, at the tail end of his career as a main eventer in 2002, he tore one of his quad muscles just walking across the ring in a tag match, which took place almost immediately after being gone due to a bicep injury for several weeks.
- Sleep deprivation and memory loss from the Danbury incident plagued New Jack for the rest of his life. The aforementioned incident, where he fell from a twenty-some feet tall scaffold due a botched throw by Vic Grimes, resulted on the latter falling seated on Jack's head. The fall alone caused Jack a skull fracture, a broken leg, permanent loss of his right eye's sight, permanent insomnia and 6 months of recovery turned-into just two so Jack could return to generate earnings for himself and his very much required treatments. And that doesn't even begin to touch his other injuries.
- Atsushi Onita, of Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling fame, cemented a career as one of Japan's most daring high flyers. After finishing a match, he simply couldn't stand, not realizing by then his right knee was completely shattered and a bone was protruding out of his skin. He was told by the medics his career was over, but proving Heart Is an Awesome Power, he changed his wrestling style and was back in the ring less than a year later.
- Paul Orndorff was forced into retirement in 1995 by a string of injuries from his time in WWF, most notably an injury to his right arm that never properly healed, causing the arm to atrophy significantly.
- Paige was forced to retire from wrestling at only 25 years old (the age that most wrestlers are either just starting out or are at the peaks of their career), due to similar neck problems that Edge and Sting had. Paige had been wrestling since she was 13, meaning that she was a 12-year veteran at the time, and participating in such a dangerous and physically taxing activity before her body had finished developing would have no doubt contributed to her early retirement. She also has Scoliosis like Hulk Hogan. However, she would return to the ring in November 2022 (at 30) as Saraya in AEW.
- Brian Pillman's accumulated injuries became very apparent near the end. The most notable of these, however, happened outside the ring. In April 1996, he fell asleep behind the wheel of his Hummer and drove it into a tree trunk, flipping it. He shattered his ankle so badly that it had to be surgically fused into a fixed walking position, forcing him to abandon his previous high-flying style for a more ground-based one.
- One of Harley Race's goals with World League Wrestling was to reduce this, High Spots having quoted him saying that if he had wrestled in a ring like the one his own promotion uses, he would not have had to retire from wrestling when he did.
- Rey Mysterio's long career and acrobatic style has taken a hellish toll on his body, especially his knees, which are in bad shape even for a luchador. This, however, didn't stop Rey from performing to an extremely high level, as seen on Lucha Underground.
- The list of injuries Sabu has accumulated over the years would probably exceed the aforementioned Mick Foley's. To put it in perspective, he ripped his biceps open (which he held together with tape and later super-glue), he's dislocated his jaw repeatedly, he's dislocated his knees, and has had his neck broken TWICE.
- Kazushi Sakuraba has got more injuries throughout his career than most of Japanese fighters, but even now that he has returned to the more accomodative pro wrestling, he does not have the retirement in his horizon.
- After a series of knee injuries ending about 1998, Randy Savage couldn't work at his former level, and had to be protected with a series of valets doing interference spots; this was far from the worst thing about WCW in 1999. Due to a neck injury he suffered while filming Spider-Man, he could no longer even turn his head towards the end of his life. There were also unsubstantiated reports of a health scare involving steroids, after which Savage shrank from about 260 to less than 200 pounds; his heart attack and subsequent death in 2011 was determined to be the result of a steroid-enlarged heart, just like many of his friends.
- Right at the end of his career and life, Davey Boy Smith's back ended up being his Achilles' Heel in kayfabe and in Real Life.
- Dan Spivey's run as Waylon Mercy was cut short by accumulated injuries.
- Scott Steiner's ring work notably declined in the late 90s and 2000s due to both age and (unconfirmed, but almost certain) abuse of steroids. He most notably developed a growing gap in the center of chest in the early-to-mid 00s, which is believed to be a type of nerve damage causing the interior pecs to atrophy. The condition has even been nicknamed "Steinerism" after Steiner himself.note From the 2010s onwards, his massive arms have all but vanished and Scott has gotten tattoos all over his upper body to seemingly try and cover his shrinking body and chest gap, often wrestling in T-shirts as well.
- Like Edge above, Sting was forced to retire after sustaining neck injuries during his final match, which revealed that he also had cervical spinal stenosis. The fact that he lasted for 30 years in the ring and could otherwise still wrestle like a man twenty years his junior was pretty impressive though. This would also be a temporary retirement, as he debuted for All Elite Wrestling in December of 2020 and returned to the ring the following March.
- Minoru Suzuki's body is really broken down after years of fighting and training nonstop, and you can note it on the second half of his MMA record, where there are several defeats to very low level guys. In fact, his battle wear is one of the reasons he takes his wrestling matches so easy.
- After his last fight, Evan Tanner (of UWF fame) stated his alcohol abuse had damaged his body past the point in which he could no longer compete at the level he once had.
- Tyrus became NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion in November 2022, a move seen by many as a cynical publicity stunt by NWA owner Billy Corgan to cash in on Tyrus' connections to conservative media (most notably as a Fox News commentator). At the time, Tyrus was pushing 50, and whatever in-ring ability he may have had was completely gone. Nine months later at the NWA 75th Anniversary Show, EC3 took the belt off him in a match with a retirement stipulation. After the match, Tyrus admitted that his body had been breaking down during his reign, and that he had suggested the retirement stip.
- The Undertaker relied more on his "zombie magic" than his strength as the years went on, due to his age. He had been wrestling for nearly 30 years and he could still go toe-to-toe with the younger guys. In a great bit of kayfabe exposition, John Cena once described The Undertaker as the only wrestler who intimidated him.
Seeing the Undertaker actually wrestle was increasingly uncommon; due to the many injuries that had piled up over his long career he worked a much shorter schedule than most WWE performers. In fact by the early 2010s he worked once a year, at WrestleMania. His appearances started to go up again during 2015, though he still tended to only wrestle sporadically before finally retiring in November 2020. - Daffney Unger retired from active competition due to various injuries, including multiple concussions and a crushed sternum. She ended up suing TNA for repeatedly booking her in matches where she had to take extreme bumps even when she protested, and for refusing to cover her hospital bills. The case was settled out of court, but she said she would likely never wrestle again and never did for the rest of her life.
- Rob Van Dam claimed during divorce proceedings that he's visually impaired due to a concussion, thus disqualifying him from ever wrestling in WWE again.
- Blood clots in his lungs forced Jesse Ventura into retirement. To this day, he's still on blood thinners.
- The Von Erich Family:
- As detailed in Dark Side of the Ring, Kerry Von Erich forced himself into the ring right after having a pretty serious motorcycle accident, not giving enough time his wounds to heal, ultimately losing his right foot and then pushing himself further into competition.
- Mike Von Erich suffered brain damage and toxic shock as the result of a car accident. By all accounts, he was practically an Empty Shell by the time of his suicide.
In-Universe
- Randy Savage's match with Ric Flair at Starrcade. Savage is basically wrestling with one arm tied behind his back (due to a torn muscle that he was working through) for what seems to be a giant middle finger to the dirtsheets. Hogan famously burned the copy of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reporting Savage’s injury and said that Dave Meltzer had been WORKED, BROTHER. Savage was then seen with his useless arm heavily wrapped and dangling limp at his side. Unfortunately this would be a common sight at Nitro, with various appendages shrinking and getting bandaged (he must have needed some serious bracing to even keep him standing), until even Macho's marks stopped being fazed by it.
- Played for Laughs with Perry Saturn in 2001. The story was that he had suffered so many blows to the head that he was now a Cloudcuckoolander that ordered crayons with mustard at restaurants and dated a mop. This was punishment for shooting on a jobber on a syndicated show.
- Part of Davey Boy Smith's gimmick: every match he lost, it was by injury on behalf of a cheating heel.
- At the start of Vampiro's "Cero Miedo" match against Pentagon, the commentators of Lucha Underground went out of their way to remind the audience of the fact that he had his back surgically repaired six times, and he was noticeably very slow in the ring, saving up his energy for short, explosive bursts of violence.
