5 WWE legends who were unhappy with their retirement match
In WWE and wrestling, retirement is a big deal. When you're a legend of the business and have put in over a decade or two (or more, in some cases) into entertaining fans, there's a certain pride about it.
Not only do WWE legends reach the highest status of popularity among fans, they also establish a legacy that they can proudly look back on. With that being said, retirement matches can always be tricky.
You have cases like Ric Flair - having a fairytale retirement match and then proceeding to hamper it with a run in TNA (albeit, it was with WWE's blessings). You have cases like Kurt Angle where even he felt his retirement match should have been against a different opponent or even with a different result - but he understood that it was in the interest of the future of WWE.
Then you have cases where retirement matches and angles can be so bad that even the WWE legends want to right their wrongs. While they haven't always been able to do so, most of them on this list have. Let's start with a WWE legend having to forcibly retire in WCW:
#5. Bret Hart - The WWE legend's career ends with a fatal kick
It was December 19th, 1999 at Starrcade. Bret Hart and Goldberg were two former Tag Team Champions and they were given the spotlight in a major main event match-up.
The two future WWE Hall of Famers would go at it and one fatal botched kick from Goldberg resulted in a concussion for Bret Hart and an abrupt end to his legendary career. Goldberg called it the biggest mistake he made in his entire life in an interview with The LAW
That will forever go down in history as the biggest mistake that I have ever made in my entire life. For those who haven’t heard me say it, I apologize profusely because God knows I put Bret Hart up on a pedastool where very few sit. The last thing that I ever wished upon him was harm, especially by my own hand.”
While Goldberg and Bret Hart remained friends, there seems to be no doubt that there's still a lot of tension over what happened. Bret Hart was extremely harsh about it when speaking to 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin on The Broken Skull Sessions, telling him:
He was one of the most unprofessional wrestlers to ever work in the business. For Bill Goldberg to be in the Hall of Fame… he hurt everybody that he worked with.
Bret Hart said that Goldberg might as well wrestle a real gorilla. Given the way the WWE legend's career ended, we don't blame him for being unhappy with his retirement match.