On the latest episode of his ARN podcast, AEW producer and manager Arn Anderson spoke with Conrad Thompson about former WWE star Tyson Kidd, who was forced to retire from in-ring action after sustaining a neck injury in a dark match against Samoa Joe. Anderson, who worked for WWE at the time, discusses how the whole incident was a combination of last minute planning and an unfortunate accident.
Not only am I a friend and a fan of Tyson, I’m a fan and a friend of Nattie. The word we got was, it was a dark match before the show started. Vince wanted to see Joe work because he heard all about him. They put together something really quick. They had TJ put his boots on. I don’t think he had time to warm up. The guys didn’t have time to talk. It was a 5-minute deal. Something accidental happened, not to say anything one way or the other caused it. It was an accident. There is no other way to put it. Accidents happen in our business. That day his career was taken away as a talent. It was one of those mistakes that happened. A guy lands wrong and he’s changed forever. Necks were not made for this business. Your neck controls so many other bodily functions. It can run down your leg. It can run down your arm. When you tear your neck up, it has ramifications all over your body. That’s what happened that night and it was a loss to the wrestling business for damn sure.
Anderson later brings up WWE’s decision of adding more chamber matches to their annual Elimination Chamber pay per view, a move that The Enforcer says hurts the value of the show.
Arn’s opinion on having 2 Elimination Chamber Matches on the same card: “In the past, when you had one of those matches and you had all top guys that had angles going into it, now you had a setting, you had a story and you had something I wanted to buy. But, the minute you started adding a second one to the same show, there are only so many things you can do inside that apparatus. When you have more than one of those, one is going to take away from the other, or they are both going to take away from each other. You don’t just use that match as a gimmick to put a bunch of guys in there that have no story, have no heat, have no reason for being in that particular match.
You can listen to the full podcast here. (H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)