Christian has been out of the ring for well over three years now with no official word of a retirement. It wasn't the first time Christian left WWE, although his previous exit was under much different circumstances.
Coming off of hot crowd reactions and a popular teaming with Tyson Tomko, Christian was reaching a high point in WWE -- or so it seemed. After an unfavorable year of booking, Christian decided to walk away and head to TNA Wrestling where he would become an instant player for the company.
Christian discussed the move on a recent E&C Pod of Awesomeness.
“It was a combination of different things. One of them was being burned out with being tired. My body was beat up. I’d been on the road straight since I was 24. I think I was 31 at the time when I left. Also, it just kind of felt like I was stuck in a rut and my situation wasn’t going to change if I stayed there. It was like, ‘we know what we have with him. He’s there, he’s doing his thing, he’s good, when something comes up, we’ll figure it out.’ But that time never came for me. Even in that first kind of run, I had a little TV program that I did with (John) Cena and I was starting to get these crazy reactions and nothing happened from there. I still didn’t seem to move up from there. It was one match. It turned into a triple threat with Jericho on the pay-per-view and kind of got shuffled around again after that, so to me, I was like ‘well, if I was getting those reactions and getting put in that spot and it’s still not happening, I have to do something here to change my situation,’ and that’s when I decided to. When my contract was up, I was probably going to step away for a little while.”
Christian would spend a solid three years in TNA, where he was a two-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion. He left in November 2008, and re-signed with WWE in early 2009.
You can hear the full podcast at this link.
