PWTorch.com - WWE News: Edge was nearly forced to retire in 2003 - details on first neck fusion surgery, quotes from Steve Austin & Kurt Angle

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WWE News: Edge was nearly forced to retire in 2003 - details on first neck fusion surgery, quotes from Steve Austin & Kurt Angle

Apr 12, 2011 - 1:32:08 PM

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By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Current WWE World Hvt. champion Edge's sudden retirement from pro wrestling comes eight years after his career was nearly ended by neck fusion surgery.

If three of Edge's discs would have been fused together, doctors believed at the time that his career would have been over. Instead, only two discs required fusing. Edge's career was also saved by an early diagnosis before his neck condition became much worse.

The following are excerpts from cover-dated March 1, 2003 covering Edge's initial neck fusion surgery in 2003, followed by quotes from Steve Austin and Kurt Angle on Edge's locker room leadership at the time:

-- Edge is scheduled to have neck surgery that will keep him out of action for a full year. Edge needs spinal-cord-fusion surgery to fuse his C6 and C7 vertebrae, the same surgery that Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Lita, Rhyno, and other WWE wrestlers have had in recent years. The surgery will be performed by Lloyd Youngblood, the same surgeon who performed surgeries on the other wrestlers.

Edge was recently pulled from five house shows because of a lingering knee problem, which actually played a part in his neck injury. "I was so worried about tweaking my knee... I didn't pay attention to anything else," he said.

Although the 11 years of taking bumps are listed as the primary cause of the injury, Edge believes the way he bumped to compensate for his injured knee may have also played a part.

Edge did catch one break along the way. Initially, Youngblood believed three of Edge's discs would need to be fused, which would have ended his wrestling career. Upon further examination, it was discovered that only two of the discs would require fusing. WWE officials are glad the problem was diagnosed so early, much earlier than Benoit's was.

Edge had been experiencing tingling in numbness in his extremities and some stingers. "The fact that seven of us (wrestlers) have been in there (for this surgery) shows that we have to slow down a little," Edge said, "because (otherwise) you're going to have a generation of crippled wrestlers."

-- Edge received ringing endorsements and encouragement from Steve Austin and Kurt Angle. "Sometimes you take these breaks - the little hiccups in your career - and you might come back stronger than you were before," Austin told the WWE website. "And I believe that with Edge. I think he was just fixing to come over the hump and be a top guy. He's the next guy that I see doing that. This will set him back a bit, but when he comes back, he'll be stronger than he was before. He's very talented, and he loves the hell out of the business, so when he comes back, he'll rise higher than he was this time."

Meanwhile, Angle referred to Edge as a locker room motivator. "He's a guy who leads by example in the ring, and he's somebody everybody gets along with in the locker room," Angle told WWE.com. "So we're going to miss him. He's one of the smiling faces in the locker room that you can always go to if you need help. It's going to be kind of difficult to go on without him. But other guys are going to have to step up and take Edge's place for the next year. Now's their opportunity to try to step in there and prove themselves the way Edge did."

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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