During a recent interview with “Insight with Chris Van Vliet,” ECW Original Spike Dudley shared the story of the exact moment he realized he had to retire from full-time professional wrestling.
“My wife was pregnant and okay, so this is what happened. This is how I officially got out of the business. My wife was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, that’d be 2010. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is a great promotion. It’s no longer there, but at the time, it was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly, aside from like ECW, this group is the group that’s closest to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. They used me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match against Sabu again, RIP. I drove up there, it’s about a five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my arm sliced. It wasn’t bleeding that bad. It was a slice, it was just from a gimmick. Honestly, going into it, I was like it’s gonna be my Sabu match, I’m gonna do my arm, so self-inflicted. So I saw it, I just taped it up, I got into my car and I drove home, and I got home at like, four or five in the morning. My wife, she’s like, ‘Are you okay? Everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I fell asleep, and I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I was like, ‘Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency room.’ But then that was the moment where I realized, Okay, I’m gonna be a father. I can’t be doing this crazy stuff anymore, because physically, that’s what I did, was take bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are, you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore. So I was 40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye opener that okay, I can’t do this and be a responsible parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it quits. I had a couple of matches after but that was the signal that you’re done with the business.”
https://youtu.be/rBo01f4Gk7E