legend William Regal has insisted he will ‘never’ wrestle again despite insisting he’s ‘better now’ than he ever was.
The British wrestling legend – who now works for as the manager for Blackpool Combat Club alongside Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson and Wheeler Yuta – earlier this year when he slapped Moxley and Danielson, and he punched Chris Jericho on a recent episode of Dynamite.
Asked if he’s consider one more match, he exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘No, never. No. My last official match was against Cesaro. My last few years, I didn’t realise – it’s come out recently, I had a serious neck problem for 20-odd years. It finally caught up with me.
‘All I ever wanted was a 20-year wrestling career when I started – I ended up with a 30-year wrestling career. I couldn’t have asked for any more. If you’re not me and you’re just looking from the outside, “Oh he should have been this, he should have been that” – no.
‘I was very happy with what I achieved. If I’d have never come to America, I had an incredible career. By the time I was 24, I’d been to 19 countries. In 20 to 24, I’d been to all the best places you could go to, wrestling all the best wrestling.
‘If it’d stopped then, I’d have had an incredible career. Everything after that – everything after was a bonus for me!’
Regal revealed that towards the end of his in-ring career, ‘it was getting harder’ and WWE were starting to use him in different roles.
‘I mean, after my last run on ECW I was struggling. I could get fit enough to do a European tour or whatever,’ he pointed out. ‘I didn’t realise I had so many different injuries, but that wasn’t found out until 2018 that was a major, major thing.’
He would face Danielson – then known as Daniel Bryan – on WWE Superstars in 2010, which he thought could have been his last match due to the pain he was in at the time.
‘Eventually, I ended up having a couple more matches. I ended up doing a thing with Jon Moxley, I did a thing with Chris Hero. They threw me into one match on NXT which was a six-man with PAC which I was happy about because I thought the world of him, still do,’ he explained.
‘Then, one more match with Cesaro – who is somebody who I absolutely think the world of. I thought, “If this is it, this is it”. I went into that thinking “this is it” ’cause I knew that my body wasn’t gonna be able to keep going much longer.’
Although he would later face Sami Zayn in an unseen match the following year in front of 30 people during a trial day in Dubai, things took a turn for the worse a couple of weeks later.
Regal continued: ‘That was when my legs went from under me one day and I had to have neck surgery, and then on top of all that I had two bleeds on the brain in 2018, I lost 40% vision in this eye, I had the heart thing.’
While the former King of the Ring insisted ‘it would be ridiculous’ to consider stepping back in the ring, he pointed out he can still perform to a high standard in between the ropes.
‘I can get in the ring now and wrestle just as good as I ever did. In fact people are like, “You wanna stop a bit”. Training, I can get in there and do that,’ he added. ‘I still train, do all my squats and push-ups that I never thought I’d be able to do.’
He paused, and said: ‘But I look like a 54 year old. I don’t want the memories of me – I can still wrestle just as good as I used to. In fact, better because I’ve got full circulation now after god knows how many years.’
Indeed, Regal even got in the ring with his son – currently working for WWE as Charlie Dempsey – in the Performance Center in Florida for an hour-long bout behind closed doors late last year.
However, knowing he can still go isn’t enough for him to risk tarnishing the fans’ perception of him, as he compared his decision to Elvis Presley.
‘I wrestled my son for an hour before Christmas in the PC in Orlando. I can wrestle. I’d rather that match with Cesaro be my final thing. “Elvis has left the building”. That’s why Colonel Tom Parker never let Elvis do an encore,’ he smiled.
‘Don’t ruin it for myself. That was as good as a match as it could ever be for me to finish my career, and 30 years in, it’s somebody else’s turn now. Why ruin it?’
AEW Double Or Nothing airs on May 29 at 1am on Fite TV.
