Triple H announces retirement - will never wrestle again

Triple H officially announced his retirement from the in-ring competition late on Friday night. Triple H, whose real name is Paul Levesque revealed his decision in a snippet of his interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith for Stephen A’s World and said that he has a defibrillator in his chest and won’t wrestle again. This was after he went into heart failure last September following a bout with viral pneumonia.

“I had viral pneumonia. My lungs were inflamed, and as the next couple of days went on and I got home, it got increasingly worse. My wife [WWE executive Stephanie McMahon] saw some blood and stuff that I was coughing up, and I went and got checked, and it was coming from viral pneumonia, but I had fluid in my lungs. I had some fluid around my heart so they followed up on it and did an EKG and Echo and everything.

Triple H officially announced his retirement from the in-ring competition late on Friday night.

Triple H, whose real name is Paul Levesque revealed his decision in a snippet of his interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith for Stephen A’s World and said that he has a defibrillator in his chest and won’t wrestle again.

“I had viral pneumonia. My lungs were inflamed, and as the next couple of days went on and I got home, it got increasingly worse. My wife [WWE executive Stephanie McMahon] saw some blood and stuff that I was coughing up, and I went and got checked, and it was coming from the viral pneumonia, but I had fluid in my lungs. I had some fluid around my heart so they followed up on it and did an EKG and Echo and everything.

Basically, the way your heart pumps out 55-60 per cent of your ejection fraction is a good number. I was at 30 per cent. I got a quick text message saying don’t take time, pack a bag real quick and head to the emergency room and I’ll fill you in on the way. So, by the time I got to the emergency room, my ejection fraction had gone down to 22 per cent, which, ya know, I was in heart failure.”

The 52-year-old made his WWE debut in 1995 and is a 14-time world champion.

From his days as a Greenwich, Conn. snob, to his era-defining run as a co-founder of D-Generation X, to the unrelenting drive that made him an absolute squared circle institution, to shepherding future main-eventers Randy Orton and Batista toward WWE greatness in Evolution, Triple H hasn’t just existed on the cutting edge — he’s been the one sharpening the blade.