Last night on Monday Night Raw, on commentary, Jerry “The King” Lawler inferred that WWE Superstar, Christian was retired. It was known that the former World Heavyweight Champion had issues with concussions and had not wrestled in six months, but there had never been any conversation about retiring from in ring competition. As it turns out, it would be reported that this was not a slip from Lawler and that the WWE does consider Christian to be retired.
Now you know that with a site such as ours, the first thing we look at is the WWE Hall of Fame. His long time tag team partner, Edge, has already been inducted, which took place in 2012 after he announced his retirement due to injury. Edge had the Hall of Fame resume, but does Christian?
Born Jay Reso, the Canadian wrestler entered the WWE in 1998 and with the exception of a two year stint in TNA, he has competed there ever since. Christian would win the Word Heavyweight Champion twice, the Intercontinental Championship four times, the ECW Champion twice, the WWE World Tag Team Champion nine times (seven with Edge) and also held the European, Hardcore and Light Heavyweight Title once.
With Edge, his tag team matches against the Hardy Boys would be match of the year candidates and would elevate all four men. Christian, although has had a very good career, did not reach the peaks that Edge or Jeff Hardy did, and the fact that his retirement was confirmed by a passing comment by Lawler as opposed to a retirement speech (like Edge) may show where he is seen by the WWE, and to a lesser extent the fans as a whole.
Saying that, we will be moving Christian from the Future Candidates and place him in to our rankings when we do our revisions in May. We expect that his ranking will be a healthy one, though we openly wonder if he will ever get in on his own, or if his only legitimate chance is with a tag team with Edge.
It is also a good time to announce a new rule that we will be enacting a policy where once a contracted WWE performer reaches the age of 45, they will automatically be switching over from Future Candidates to Current Candidates for the WWE Hall of Fame.
Until now, we never had a set age policy and were going by when we thought a wrestler was essentially “done” and unlikely to return for a substantial WWE run. We are still going to go with that to a point if we think a wrestler under the age of 45 is unlikely to come back for a WWE run (see, X-Pac) but once a performer hits that age, they probably should be wrapping it up, or at the very least they are certainly well into the back nine of their career.
This may prevent what occurred to us a few years ago with Dustin Rhodes (Goldust) was ranked on our initial list when we erroneously thought that he would not be returning in a major role to the WWE.
Not only did he do so, he came back in the best shape of his career and won the Tag Team Championship two more times with his brother Cody, and as of this writing, he has remained on our list, and at age 45, will now stay in lieu of our new age rule.
With all of that said, we here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to thank Jay Reso (Christian) for his career and wish him the best in his future career after World Wrestling Entertainment.
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