8 Famous Wrestlers Whose Careers BRUTALLY Faded Away

So I think every now and then we do just need to take a step back from pro wrestling. Remember that it is really, really hard how many times you see something go awry in a match and you get somebody shouting out, well, what a botch that was. It wasn't a botch, somebody just made a mistake. Because again, wrestling is really hard. It's also totally brutal on your body as well, which is why sometimes wrestlers do just have to go away or to tie into the title of this video, their careers brutally fade away because they don't have enough left in the tank to have a retirement match. That absolutely sucks as well because look at what we did with Sting in AW or even John Cena. I know that was a mixed bag, but just seeing him go out on his own special show made it a reward for me to toughen up. So let's make sure we go through eight specific wrestlers here and give them their due. Tell you what, my friends, they were absolutely awesome. 8. Yokozuna So Yokozuna is one of the best professional wrestlers that we do not talk about enough today. If you're not aware of him, you can see him on the screen right now and even though he was a gargantuan man, he moved around like a cat. One day the Undertaker saw him and went to Vince Madden and said, excuse me boss, I want to work with that guy. And this is the Undertaker being the Undertaker, he ain't just going to ask that for anybody. Given how the WWF was in the mid 90s, there are three specific things people do remember Yokes for, which of course is the awful And when he got slammed by Lex Luthor. Luger, when we were trying to make sure that Lex Luger became the new Hulk Hogan. Yes, that was as kind of bad as it sounded. Sadly, the third one of these, though, that always does the rounds, including in the Yokozuna documentary that the WWE themselves produced, he also struggled with his weight. At his heaviest, he was reported to be 660 pounds, or 300 kilograms from our European friends, and his body had become so immobilized by that point, eventually his body started to break down. There's also another story where Vader supposedly broke Zunes' leg, And due to his size, it took a forklift to remove his body. It actually gets even more sad because this was not a legitimate injury, instead it was an angle, because the WWF had sat down with Yokozuna and said to him, we are going to give you some time off because we desperately need you to lose some weight. Now, Yoko was able to do this because he dropped over 100 pounds in 1996, which is super impressive, but for whatever reason, it did not convince officials that in 1998 he got let go. Of course, what happened after this is the usual standard affair for a pro wrestler in the late 90s. Yokozuna went back to the indie scene. Which at that time was not like it was today, it was pretty hard to make any money. It all led to his tragic passing on the 23rd of October 2000 while on a tour of the United Kingdom doing these shows, and the worst part is he was just 34 years old. You have to imagine if he was able to keep his weight down, he would have gone on to become even better still. Believe you me my friends, that is a massive compliment. Go and put on a Yokozuna match today, I promise you, you will be impressed. 7. Bobby Fish The Undisputed Era was for a spell the undisputed hottest thing in pro wrestling. That's the best way to summarize this and what happened to Bobby Fish is to go through the entire faction to see what happened since departing WWE. Adam Cole when he debuted at AEW All Out 2021 was on top of the world and once again reminding you why he was one of the best wrestlers on the planet when sadly he suffered some concussion issues and a neck injury and as of me talking to you, we still don't know what's going to happen to his career. But as always, wrestling is the most Most important, of the least important things, I just hope that guy's okay. Kyle O'Reilly also had to overcome extensive neck problems in much more jovial news. He recently did return to AEW, as I am talking to you, and he became a Trios champion. In AEW 2, Roderick Strong was able to be the international title, so that was good. And really, we need to put more respect on Roddy's name. He somehow gets better with age. I mean, when do you ever see another bad match? And that's all, Bobby Fish. Well, it all kind of did go weird after he joined the Royal League Wrestling. It made perfect sense why he would go there, given that his friends had jumped ship as well, but he only lasted 10 months under Tony Khan's employment. There was also some sort of an issue with CM Punk, because one, during an episode of Collision, Bobby Fish kicked out of the GTS at 3.5, and he then went online... Well, let's just say he had some horrible words to say about CM Punk, and it felt very one-sided. Since then as well, though, it kind of feels like Fish has stepped away from wrestling, because he's only wrestled 14 matches across 2025, and when we poked our noses into 2026, I don't think he's wrestled at all. Now, maybe he has just decided to quietly hang them up, which is his right, but given how hot he was when the Undisputed Era was running wild in NXT, that was just a strange old end, really. I think he would have gone out with more of a bang. Number 6, Mick Foley. Now, it's important to say that if Mick Foley had it his way, he would probably be retiring from pro wrestling right now in an angle with either Jon Moxley or MBF. The Mixter has talked about this. He has sat down and had chats with both those guys, and apparently they came up with one hell of a plan. Now, we all know about his original retirement back in 2000, when Triple H threw him through the hell in a cell when we needed a fourth guy for the WrestleMania main event, so Foley returned to tick that box. You can find even more rumours that Jon Moxley and Mick Foley were going to go at it at SummerSlam 2012, I'll let you google that, when it was Maxwell Jacob Freeman who came to the front, because yeah, both those dudes have talked about it, they have a secret meeting In Long Island, apparently they came It feels like Foley was going to pull the trigger on this too because he did start training when it all did fall down. Because he suffered a concussion and realized, man, I don't think I can do this anymore. It's not worth my health. It's not worth my time. It's not worth what I may put my family through. So it does mean that Mick Foley's actual last match was the six minutes he spent at the 2012 Royal Rumble. And let me tell you this. If a time angle should be based on your contribution to the business or how great you were, then the former Cactus Jack should have 42,799 matches because good Greek is that guy underrated. Some idiots like to go, he just threw his body off stuff. No, he doesn't. So China was finally and somewhat indirectly inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 as a member of Degeneration X, but when somebody asked Triple H about a solo induction, he had I'm sure she will be in the Hall of Fame sometime on her own. I think it's fitting she is in there with VX in the beginning, because that's how she started, and I think it's what it should be. Now that is absolutely true, because during D-Generation X Part 1, it would not have worked if it wasn't just Triple H and Shawn Michaels, because Chyna added the secret sauce. Hard to get across these days, but in 1997, nobody had seen anything like the ninth wonder of the world. Sadly though, there may be more to this though, because when Chyna did leave the WWF in 2001, well, it was on super duper bare terms. She also came off the back of a bunch of chatter due to her personal life, given that she had been dating Triple H, who was now seeing Stephanie McMahon, but after this it just felt like the rug was pulled out from under her feet, as even though she tried to make inroads when it came to acting, eventually she settled on pornography too, and let's just say that didn't really help given that she was dealing with a lot of personal issues too. Before all that though, she was actually able to wrestle some matches for New Japan in 2002 and made a one-off appearance in 2011 for TNA, but sadly she tragically died in 2016 2016 at a tender age of just 40. What I really get you is that Chyna never got her second run in the WWE and you always kind of felt like it was going to happen. Now many outlets have reported maybe the issue did come from the fact she did do pornography, but that is not the point. If anybody deserved a big old send off what they had done for women's wrestling and women in wrestling, it was Chyna and the fact that it all ended on upsetting notes, it's just not right man. Especially because this happens to a lot of wrestlers. We've got to change this. Number four, Kane. So this one really does come down to his tenure in the business. Because Kane, or the Big Red Machine, debuted in 1997. And basically went all the way through to 2021. And even after that, he kept popping up here and there. Going, oh, hi. You remember me. My name is Kane. I mean, he had come a long way from Isaac Yankum, which was a wrestling dentist. And it's not like the real life Glenn Jacobs doesn't have stuff to do after retirement. Because he did get into politics. And no, we're not going to talk about that here. When you do go back to the character it kind of feels It feels like he should have got a send-off like The Undertaker, but let's not forget they were the Brothers of Destruction, and yeah, who the flub has a 20-plus career in the WWE, the answer is few and far between. So we have a Mick Foley situation here, because the last time we saw him properly was a short stint in the 2021 Royal Rumble, that just seems like such a strange way to go off into the sunset when you had such an impact on the business like Kane did in the late 90s. It feels like this was the plan as well though, because Kane was inducted into the Hall of Fame that year, so it was a one-two punch. These days, we definitely don't need to see him come back. He just moved on. It doesn't seem to be bothering him, though, so I guess it's not a problem. But given how long he was with the company, one day he was kind of there, one day kind of was. Number three, Bob Batman. To the Thailand of Roman Reigns, 1,316 revolutionary title reign as undisputed WWE champion, Michael Cole would often tell us. There's only four historical figures who had a world title reign longer than Romans. In ascending order, it was Pedro Morales, Hulk Hogan, Bob Backlund, Bruno Samadhi. Some people are always surprised to hear that Backlund is in that list, but I tell you, my friends, he was the big hero, the big babyface, before we got to Hulkamania. I mean, his status as a top guy never changed the company in the way that Hulk Hogan did, but Bob was a guy who would go on the road and work with everybody, including Bastian Bugger. In fact, you can look it up now. Go find the record books. On one night, he actually did the job. He's basically chosen to be the next. big guy after Bruno Sammartino had exited stage left too, so it's kind of crazy that in general WWE doesn't sink his praises higher. I mean, I guess you could say he was more of a Vince McMahon senior guy, but he was still the guy. Sometimes you don't even see him in video packages at all. The last notable thing Backlund did for WWE was act as Darren Young's life coach between 2016 and 2017. Because by this stage Bob was nuts, but somehow he made it work. The equivalent to this, I suppose, would be getting to 2050 and Roman Roman Reigns being treated like a nothing. Because yes, once again, Bob Bacton was placed at the top of the card, and he had one hell of a title round. When you get to the modern day, it's almost like we forgot. Number two, Randy Savage. So the big sadness when it comes to match-up man Randy Savage is that he never got that second run in the WWE. There are a bunch of stories out there, and I would take the majority of them with a pinch of salt. But for whatever reason, after he had left the World Wrestling Federation in 1990, he Before Vince McMahon decided, nope, we are never going to hire the Macho Man back, he stood by his word, and it quite literally never happened. Randy Savage, of course, had to end his career somewhere, though, and actually it came down in TNA. This was four years after he had exited WCW, when he was brought out as a surprise to close out Victory Road in 2004. He was then booked alongside AJ Styles and Jeff Hardy in the main event of Turning Point the following month, where they were going to defeat the Kings of Wrestling. Now, even though it was 2004, most people did see this as a massive match because it was an all-star affair, but sadly, for whatever reason, Randy Savage just didn't feel like Randy Savage. I mean, gone were the trademark mannerisms, the colourful attire, and he didn't even do a diving elbow drop. Instead, there was a guy in the ring who just looked like he had no confidence at all, and I love the matchup I read. I'm sure if you did grow up in the Hulk Hogan era, it was always the Hulkster or Macho Man who could have done way better by him. 1. Andre the Giant Sometimes, being a wrestling fan can be just a little bit depressing. We all have our heroes in the industry, and if you do watch for long enough, you witness the gradual decline in their health, and no wrestler better exemplifies that than Andre the Giant. If you do not know, the reason Andre was so tall is because he suffered from gigantism and at one point even tipped the scales at 520 pounds, making him the biggest attraction WWE had during the 80s. He was a major hit with audiences of that era before he did his heel turn, and let's Let's not forget he was dubbed the eighth one. Of course, it all led to that WrestleMania 3 main event against Hulk Hogan, and there's no other way to put it, that was absolutely seismic and one of the most important matches in history. The sad part, though, is that when modern audiences look this up, they will see somebody that can't really move, and that was not Andre the Giant. When you find him in his peak years, your jaw will hit the floor. If this was a Yokozuna situation, how could somebody be so big and move around like it was nothing? Everybody also used to talk about the fact that Andre was in so much pain and actually continued wrestling until a month before his passing. Once again, there he was just in constant discomfort, hence why he was mostly using multi-man tag belts. Given that he was Andre the Giant, though, people wanted him on the show. He very sadly passed away from congestive heart failure in January 1993 at just 46. Once again, it's Andre the Giant. When he would be immortalized later that year as the first inductee into the newly minted WWE Hall of Fame. But we should have had a week of tribute shows for this guy. Because really, without Andre the Giant, Probably don't have the World Wrestling Federation. Not many other wrestlers who deserve the much better send-off that they did get. Make sure you let us know in the comments below. If you like the video, share the video and subscribe. Also, click the video on the screen to get more information in your life. Otherwise, my friends, I appreciate you and I will talk to you again very soon.