8 WWE Wrestlers That COULDN'T Stay Retired

2. Beth Phoenix

Beth Phoenix is one of the many wrestlers who suffered because they existed before the women's wrestling revolution. Plying her trade at the peak of the much-maligned Divas era, Phoenix was a genuine badass who was never able to show the extent of what she could do in the ring due to Vince McMahon's Total Divas-style booking.

As such, Phoenix decided that it was time to spend quality time with her family in 2012.

As her husband Edge had retired the year before, it made a lot of sense for Beth to take herself away from the grind of a full-time WWE road schedule. The 'Glamazon' was missed, but WWE was not the female-friendly work environment that it is today back in those far darker days. 

Since Phoenix's final match against AJ Lee on the 29 October 2012 episode of Raw, she has returned for Royal Rumble appearances in 2018 and 2020 and a plethora of tag matches, the last of which saw her and Edge take on Judgment Day pairing Finn Bálor and Rhea Ripley at Elimination Chamber 2023.