Tyson Kidd aka TJ Wilson retired from in-ring competition after suffering a career-ending neck injury due to a Muscle Buster he took from Samoa Joe in a dark match in 2015. He works as a producer for WWE now and is behind the production of many women’s matches.
TJ’s wife, Natalya, has opened up about how WWE handled her husband’s career-ending injury in her book “The Last Beating Hart”, detailing months of silence, denial, and emotional struggle.
“Back home, TJ was still recovering from his surgery, and even though it had been nine months since he was injured, he still hadn’t heard anything from WWE, or Vince (McMahon), about any restitution for his injury. TJ was no longer able to wrestle and now had a spinal fusion at the very highest vertebrae in his neck, which allowed him only half the movement he had before.
It was a serious condition TJ would have for the rest of his life. Some feelers were sent out to see if TJ would like to go to NXT and ‘help out,’ but TJ didn’t want to be coaching people on how to achieve their dreams a month or two after losing his. The idea of that hurt him too much, and I completely understood why. Especially after the company had decided to pretend his injury never happened.”
Natalya said TJ kept waiting to hear from Vince McMahon. A call, a text or even a simple apology.
“TJ wasn’t waiting around for an invitation to stay with the company; he was waiting for a call, or text from Vince. He was waiting for a simple apology. But it never came. Nothing did. Even back when he first checked his phone after waking up from surgery, it was full of best wishes from wrestlers at WWE and all around the world, but nothing from Vince. There was no text. No call. Nothing from Vince asking if he was okay.
TJ thought, in WWE’s eyes, it was like if they never mentioned it, then it never happened, but that just made TJ feel like he didn’t matter to them. And that ate him up. We kept waiting, in the hope that Vince would reach out and acknowledge what had happened to TJ.
I told TJ they’d eventually have a conversation with him and we could all work through this and figure out the next steps in his life. But TJ was tired of being forgotten and dismissed, and hope wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So he hired someone to be a voice that Vince might respond to.”
When TJ’s lawyer told him an apology would “never happen,” he still refused to sue as he just wanted Vince to acknowledge what happened.
“All I want is an apology,” TJ told his lawyer. “That absolutely won’t happen,” his lawyer said in return, “because that would be admitting fault.”
“TJ didn’t want to file a lawsuit at all. TJ just wanted Vince to address what happened to him in their ring. He agonized over it for months, because he didn’t want the tension between himself and WWE to escalate, and neither did I. It was the last thing in the world I wanted.”
After eight months of silence, TJ decided to write Vince a letter.
“But after eight months of radio silence from Vince, TJ eventually decided to send Vince a letter. In that correspondence, TJ said he wasn’t okay with what had happened, and listed the series of events that led to his injury, as well as the dire medical implications it would incur for the rest of his life.
He stated in the letter that he wanted to put it all in writing in case Vince wasn’t aware of what had happened to him. TJ said that because of his injury, not only could he never wrestle again, he couldn’t even move his head, and Vince hadn’t reached out a single time to check if he was okay.”
WWE management finally reached out, but the conversation didn’t go as expected.
“After the letter was sent, TJ received some calls from WWE management asking about his going to NXT again. TJ felt like they were offering him a job just so he’d move on – that the company was relying on his love of the business, and his reputation of being a good soldier, to make this all go away without having to actually address it.
Their account of what happened was completely different than TJ’s. They denied everything and finished by saying that if I talked about TJ’s injury at work or disparaged the company, they would trigger a clause in my contract and let me go.
I was in shock at their position, and TJ was now even more upset; I had tried my best to walk the line of going back to work while also being there for TJ; I had never been a bad employee, as a matter of fact, I was probably too much of a pushover.
But this was the moment when TJ and I decided we’d had enough of being nice and being quiet. I felt like I couldn’t emotionally take much more. We were trying to be reasonable, but sometimes trying to reason with a machine just doesn’t work.”
Later, while WWE was testing its new employee portal, TJ received a message approving time off – the exact number of days he had been out injured.
“WWE was developing its internal employee portal, where they could post schedules and updates, and talent could request time off from talent relations. The IT team beavered away building the infrastructure, TJ got a message to his phone that said the days off he’d requested had been approved – the exact number of days he had been out with his injury.
At first he thought nothing of it. Then it dawned on him that he didn’t want it listed anywhere in WWE’s corporate system that it was him who had requested time away from the company, when he was in fact injured.
So he called WWE, and was called back by Triple H, who said it was a mistake and that they’d rectify it right away. He told TJ they were still in the testing phase of the app, and that he was never supposed to get that message. ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Hunter said.
And while their conversation started about one thing, it bled into another, as Hunter asked TJ how he was. ‘Honestly,’ TJ told him, ‘I don’t understand how I can get an apology about an app, but not about my neck.’ Hunter fell silent. Maybe he knew it wasn’t right. Then he asked, ‘Can you leave it with me?’ TJ knew that, at this point in Hunter’s career, he wasn’t the overall decision maker – he was just the person asked to relay messages from Vince. But TJ agreed to let Hunter handle it.
He wasn’t even sure what that meant, as he’d been told by his lawyer not to expect any movement from WWE’s side unless our side filed a lawsuit. But the next day, Vince texted TJ, eighteen months after he broke his neck. He said he was so sorry for what happened, and that he was going against the advice of his team by apologizing, but felt it was the right thing to do. I saw TJ reading that text, and I could see the hurt moving a little – the weight of the world becoming just a fraction lighter.”
After that, Vince flew out to meet TJ in person.
“You should call Vince,” I said, “because you have so much to offer outside the ring. And to my surprise, the next day, TJ did. Vince missed a Monday Night RAW taping and flew to meet TJ in person and talk. The conversation went well, and TJ felt Vince was very sincere in his regret about how everything was handled.
I think they found a lot of common ground, and Vince came to learn and appreciate a lot more about TJ and his outlook on life – how TJ was someone with an extraordinary amount of drive, a survivor but never a victim. Vince said he’d help TJ do whatever he wanted to do in the company, as soon as TJ figured out what that was.”
