3-time WWE champion says he had to retire because of career-ending injury; was getting huge 5-year contract before that

A former three-time WWE Tag Team Champion has now confessed that before a career-ending injury forced him to retire, he was talking with the Stamford-based company about a new contract. The star has also provided further details.

On June 1, 2015, Tyson Kidd aka TJ Wilson suffered a serious spinal injury during a match against Samoa Joe. The injury was a horrifying one, and there was talk of him never being able to walk again. Thankfully, he was able to recover from that and walk, but he had to hang up his boots once and for all. Instead of an in-ring career, he had to transition to becoming a backstage producer.

Wilson, who is married to veteran star Natalya, still works as a producer in WWE and has quickly become one of the most celebrated names in the team right now. During a recent interview on Developmentally Speaking, the star revealed that there were huge plans for his career before he had to retire untimely. He had initially planned to wrestle till he was 40 before finally retiring.

“I didn’t know what was next. Prior to that, I did think I had a long-term plan. I remember they were talking to me about signing a new deal. In my mind, I was going to sign. This is just in my mind. In my mind, I was going to sign a five-year deal that would take me till I was 40. At 40, I will have been wrestling at that point for 25 years. I’m 40, everything seemed like a nice, perfect round number, and then I kind of wanted to get out. That was my mind," he said. [H/T: WrestleTalk]

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WWE star and producer TJ Wilson talks about the moment when he knew that he was never going to wrestle again

WWE producer TJ Wilson talked about the time the surgeon came into the room he was in, to give him the news about the extent of his injury.

He said that he was in tune with his body and was already aware that his neck was broken and that his wrestling career was over. However, it was difficult for him to process everything that was going on and he had no idea what he was going to do next.

“The surgeon comes on the morning to kind of give me the news. But I’m very in tune with my body, and in the moment, I knew my neck was broken. I knew I was never wrestling again. I knew that in that moment. In that moment, I did not know what was next. I had no clue. I didn’t know anything. I just knew that this dream that I’d seen through, this version of it, was over," he said.

It's safe to say that the star has moved on and become quite successful at his job as a WWE Producer. However, the years lost from his career due to the injury will remain a huge tragedy for the wrestling world as a whole.