8 Wrestlers Who Quit On Top

There's a time-honoured and much respected tradition in the wrestling industry that you exit on your back. As an aging star's career reaches its conclusion, they're expected to lie down for the next generation of talent before finally calling it a day, having given something back on their way out.

However, it rarely takes the form of a marquee, torch-passing moment. Tradition holds that you also exit on the bottom, shunted down the card to work the circuit with unproven talent on the rise. By the time the boots are hung up for good, a wrestler's relevance is often already depleted. How many legitimate retirement matches can you remember? Conversely, how many stars of yesteryear can you recall who just gradually dwindled from prominence?

The majority of performers fall into the latter category, their glory days long past as they stare at the lights night after night. The addictive nature of the business means that many end up outstaying their welcome by a considerable margin.

Glittering retirements are scarce. Not many have the privilege of saying goodbye to their adoring fans whilst they still care. But there are some exceptions. And in nearly every case, they inevitably came back.

There comes a point in everybody's career when they just have to say no to that $45 million contract offer, and put their happiness first. For Brock Lesnar, that meant walking away from his position as WWE's breakout star and returning to his farm in Minnesota, ahead of an ultimately failed tilt at pro-football.

Just two years after becoming the company's youngest ever champion The Beast Incarnate, tired of the gruelling schedule and having accomplished pretty much everything in short order, decided it was time for a change of scenery. He couldn't accept the fact that despite being only being 27 years old, he was in perpetual agony on his weekends off. His employers, meanwhile, couldn't accept the fact they were about to lose their first true new megastar in yonks, and so offered him a preposterous contract extension from the same dream chequebook as Bret Hart's reneged 1996 deal.

Brock was having none of it, and after his marquee match with Goldberg at WrestleMania XX, quit the business. It wouldn't stick; his football dream was ended by a motorcycle crash, and he was back between the ropes - albeit in Japan - by 2005.