His belt is being hung up. After undergoing heart surgery last year owing to heart problems, WWE star Paul “Triple H” Levesque has announced his retirement.

“As far as in ring, which I get [asked about] a lot, I’m done,” On Friday, March 25, the 52-year-old athlete informed Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s First Take. “I would never wrestle again. First, I have a defibrillator in my chest. Which, it’s probably not a good idea for me to get zapped on live TV.”

The 14-time world champion, whose full interview will run on Stephen A’s World on Friday evening, detailed why he decided to retire from the ring, citing a health crisis in the fall of 2021 as the catalyst for his decision.

The pro wrestler remembers experiencing viral pneumonia, which caused his lungs to swell. He grew “increasingly worse” after realising he had fluid around his lungs and heart, stating that physicians ordered him to pack a bag and travel to the hospital as soon as possible.

Before arriving at the emergency hospital, Triple H’s heart ejection fraction was only 30%, when it should have been between 55 and 60%. (Ejection fraction refers to the efficiency with which the left or right ventricle pumps blood with each heartbeat.)

“By the time I got to the emergency room, my ejection fraction had gone down to 22,” During his interview, WWE’s executive vice president of global talent strategy and development noted. “I was in heart failure. Bad.”

Before his heart catheterization operation the next morning, Triple H discovered that his ejection fraction had dropped to 12. In November 2021, he underwent cardiac surgery due to a dramatic drop in the way his heart was pumping.

“[I was] sort of at the one-yard line of where you need to be — or where you don’t want to be, really, for your family and your future,” Prior to surgery, the New Hampshire native informed Smith, 54, about his health.

As a parent of three, such panic caused him to reconsider what was essential to him.

“Suddenly, I come home, I’m a little bit sick and [then] their dad who is strong always suddenly is in the hospital. I don’t know if they understood the consequences of it,” Triple H stated, stressing that he was well aware of the seriousness of his cardiac problems. “There’s moments in there when they’re putting you out for stuff and you think, ‘This is it. Do you wake up from this?’ That’s tough to swallow.”

He added: “It makes you think differently about life. It doesn’t make you any less driven about the things that you do, but it certainly makes you appreciate the things that you have more. Your friends and your family.”

Triple H’s most recent match took place at a WWE live event in June 2019. Later that month, he had his last televised appearance.

The TV personality, who debuted on television in the early 1990s as Hunter Hearst Hemsley, continued to wrestle as Triple H on WWE Raw, WWE’s Most Wanted Treasures, and WWE NXT until 2021. He’s also worked as a producer and director on a number of wrestling-related productions.

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