10 Surprising Wrestlers Retiring Sooner Than You Think
1. Riddle
Riddle was written out of WWE storylines on the December 5, 2022 edition of Monday Night Raw.
Solo Sikoa was credited for (and heated up via) the "injury" that WWE announced would keep Riddle out of action for six weeks. After allegedly breaching the company's internal Wellness Policy, in a story broken by Bodyslam.net, no public announcement was made - despite this being standard practise once upon a time. This moved Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter to speculate that, in the event that the story was legitimate, WWE may have "secretly" amended the policy. This December incident was allegedly Riddle's second infraction, but Meltzer's maths didn't quite add up; Riddle wasn't quite gone for 30 days across the summer.
Nonetheless, Riddle has been gone for longer than six weeks this time around; at time of writing, he's into his tenth, and the prospective WrestleMania 39 card has zero use for him. If the "six weeks" line was a euphemism for "he's been suspended for 60 days resulting from a second violation", he's been out 71.
Accused of harrowing sexual misconduct during the #SpeakingOut movement of 2020, Riddle, who hardly represented himself particularly well, appears to have lunged with no abandon into a lifestyle that collides dramatically with WWE's public, family-friendly values.
Attending adult entertainment award ceremonies and admitting to recreational drug use - in screen shots that for obvious reasons it must be stated could have been doctored - Riddle, per dark Twitter rumours, is spiralling out of control to an unrecoverable extent.