Ted DiBiase Sr. Opens Up About Career-Ending Injury On His Podcast

In a candid discussion on his podcast, “Everybody’s Got a Pod,” WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase Sr. shared the details of the injury that ultimately led to his retirement from in-ring competition. DiBiase recounted the sequence of events that led him to make the difficult decision.

“I started having this numbness in my left arm. And I didn’t know where it was coming from. I go and see a doctor and, he tells me, he says, you’ve got a disc issue. And he says, what we need to do, he says, the way we fix this is we take it back. Then they would take a bone chip from your hip, put that in there, and then fuse it,” DiBiase revealed.

Despite the recommendation for surgery, DiBiase felt a sense of obligation to return to Japan for a tag team tournament due to the support he had received from The Giant Baba.

“I told my wife, and I said, this will be it. But it was I only got through a couple of days of that tour and realized I can’t keep going. And that’s what I told Giant Baba. And, you know, I said, I apologize. I said, you guys have been so good to me. And I said I just had to come back and try.”

DiBiase’s respect for his peers was reciprocated when Giant Baba understood his situation. He said,

“And the other thing that amazed me is this was like a three-week tour, and I was only like four or five days into it. Yeah. And, he says, I’ll be at the hotel and pay you tomorrow. He paid me for the whole tour. He understood. Because he had had the same thing, the deal with the disc in his neck. I didn’t, you know, it’s kind of like, I know that after I had the surgery.”

Reflecting on the gravity of his injury, DiBiase explained how doctors warned him about the potential risks associated with his condition.

“The doctors told me, they said, now he says, here’s the thing. He says, you know, the odds of it happening, or a thousand to one, he says, but now that you’ve had this, this thing is done, you know, if you ever get hit or something, just the right way, it could leave you paralyzed, Not worth it. And I said that’s it. I’m done. So that was it.”

You can keep up with all your wrestling news right here on eWrestlingNews.com. Or, you can follow us over on our Twitter and Facebook pages.