Tyson Kidd discusses the night his career was over.
On June 1, 2015, Tyson Kidd's career changed forever. Taking a muscle buster from Samoa Joe, Kidd landed wrong on his neck and was left momentarily paralyzed. The bump effectively ended Kidd's career as an in-ring performer, just as he was heating up in a tag team with Cesaro.
Speaking to Jan Murphy of the Kingston Whig Standard, Kidd detailed everything that happened on that fateful night.
"The night of injury,” Kidd explained, “it was just one of those days where the show was being changed — up to the last minute — but the show was being changed and the next thing I know it’s me against Joe in a dark match. I’d never worked Joe before. I’d of course seen him. I’m a student of the game, I’ve seen everybody. But I’d never physically worked him. When we landed on the Muscle Buster, I saw the whitest light I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a concussion for a second. I remember thinking, ‘Man, I did this whole match, completely on the fly, I pulled it off and then I get rocked at the end.’”
Kidd took some blame for the bump, saying, “I have a picture and I think my hands are in the wrong position compared to other ones I’ve seen. I wasn’t able to run through it with him (before the match). I drop, bang, and at first I saw this light and I was like, ‘Ah, man.’ And then my whole body went limp. It felt like it weighed a million pounds. I was completely paralyzed. I was paralyzed from the neck down." Kidd continued, “We hit, however long it takes him to pin me 1, 2, 3, give it a beat and then I could move my fingers and toes. It was probably five or six seconds. But time stands still. I knew because I was being pinned, but in terms of sense of time, it was out the window. If it had just happened and I’m just laying there, I would have had no clue, but since I was being pinned, I know it was only a matter of several seconds.”
Kidd then went into detail of what happened following the match.
“Cesaro goes to pull me out of the ring and I said, ‘Don’t touch me,'" he explained. "I started to regain feeling. It was kind of like if you’ve ever been hit in the chin and you kind of feel fuzzy, that’s how I felt after. Finally, the feeling came back. Then I had the worst pain ever in my neck.”
Kidd was taken to the hospital and was told that the C2 disc in his spine had ruptured.
“They told me literally, 1% of people survive that injury (so they were skeptical of the diagnosis). Cesaro was there and he said, ‘Well, you don’t know him, he could be the 1%.’”
Cesaro proved to be correct as Kidd survived the injury and did not end up paralyzed like so many before him. While Kidd is unlikely to compete in the ring again, he does work backstage as a producer for WWE. You can read Kidd discussing his transition into a producer role by clicking here.
