Sports. Honestly. Since 2011

Tyson Kidd: Is he now on borrowed time?

On April 11th, 2011, the Rated R Superstar Edge stood in the middle of the ring, in front of the WWE Universe, and opened up with this:

“You’re may to have to bear with me here a little bit. I’m probably going to ramble and not make much sense, but please bear with me.”

That very moment, hearts stopped. The monotonous semblance in his voice described that of a man that was about deliver a piece of news that he didn’t want to give, words that hurt to come out of his mouth, and an announcement that would shock wrestling fans all around the world. Edge was done. Forced to retire. Finished.

“Um, so, uhhh, I passed strength tests and all of those things, and I made it through Wrestlemania. But, uh The WWE wanted me to go get more tests. And thankfully I did. Um, because the MRI showed that, that I have to retire.”

Just like that. A decade of decadence over in one final, heart-breaking promo. He didn’t want it. The fans didn’t want it. His life itself needed it. Edge, real name Adam Copeland, stood before the WWE Universe, tears filling his eyes, to say his final goodbye to his in-ring career and to thank everyone for cheering him when they did, for booing him when he deserved it, and for following his life and his journey inside the ring. But he said one thing that stuck. One thing that has come to light recently with injuries to the likes of Daniel Bryan and Tyson Kidd.

“But because of that surgery I knew that I was, uh, I was wrestling on borrowed time from that point on.”

A surgery which Edge underwent in 2003. More specifically, spinal fusion surgery to fuse the discs between the C5, C6 an C7 vertebrae. Eight year later, Edge would retire from all in-ring competition.

It was also the same surgery Stone Cold Steve Austin had underwent, following a botched piledriver from the late Owen Hart, which left Austin with a broken neck. Austin would receive neck fusion to repair the C3 and C4 vertebrae and would go on to wrestle his last match on March 30th, 2003, at WrestleMania XIX. This came against doctor’s orders, as they warned him any major impact caused to the neck could result in permanent paralysis or even death. The same warning Edge had received, leading him to an early retirement.

Then there are stories with a happy-but-sad ending.

Kurt Angle, as you remember, won an Olympic gold medal on a “broken freakin’ neck” back in 1996. Two years later, he was training to be a WWE Superstar, engaging in a profession that is both physically and mentally taxing. Angle spent his wrestling career giving multiple suplexes to opponents, performing moonsaults and taking his fair share of high-angled bumps. By the time WrestleMania XIX rolled around, Angle took on Lesnar with practically no arm strength left.

While Angle still wrestles today, as a member of the TNA roster, the sad portion of his journey is the addiction to painkillers that followed his neck surgery, after wrestling at a high pace with a degenerated neck. As Chris Schramm of Slam! Sports wrote here, Angle had become addicted to Percocet, Vicodin, Norco and Lorcet, and would take a cocktail of up to 65 pills a day at one point.

Angle was later released from the company for that reason, among a few others. He would later enter rehab to help battle the demons he was faced with, including instances with narcotics and alcohol, leading to a DUI charge.

But then there are the success stories. Rhyno went through neck surgery in 2001, just one year after Austin, and he is still wrestling today, as a member of the NXT roster. John Cena also underwent neck surgery, among many other surgeries over the years, and he still remains in the WWE as one of their hardest working individuals in the last decade.

Now in today’s era, we’ve lived through the Daniel Bryan scare when he underwent successful neck surgery back in 2014. While his neck wasn’t as major as the aforementioned wrestlers who had their careers cut short, it was still enough to remind wrestling fans of those horror stories and put some scare into all of them.

Tyson Kidd, not so lucky.

After taking a Muscle Buster from former TNA superstar Samoa Joe, during a dark match at a recent WWE event, reports came out that Kidd had suffered a neck injury. Later, we would discover that his injury was more severe than expected, and surgery would be required to repair the damage. With a 14 month time-line to rehab the surgery and get back into game-shape, the scare has been revived. Only this time, there’s a little more justification behind this one. The fortunate news is that the surgery was a complete success.

It all depends on how Tyson Kidd approaches his recovery and what he does in the ring from this point forward. His in-ring style is safe, albeit he performs a few top-rope maneuvers, but for the most part he is safe and being a part of a tag team with Cesaro heavily reduces his role in a match. Like Austin, his neck injury came from a freak accident and there wasn’t much he could do to prevent it but to further his career, there are methods to prevent risk of further injury.

For now, time will tell what this injury does to Tyson Kidd in the long-run. All wrestling fans can hope for at this point is to have to re-live another moment of a man struggling to come to terms with the fact that his wrestling career is over and that he has to say goodbye.

“If you asked me if I’d travel all the roads, log all te miles, hop on all the flights, all the sleepless nights, all the surgeries, all of the injuries, the metal rods in my teeth, all of it. If you asked me if I’d do it again…in a heartbeat.”

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