Comments made by William Regal on Twitter recently, in the wake of performative outrage regarding a spot at AEW’s World End where Kyle Fletcher took a sleeper suplex from the top rope and landed on his shoulder (but people decided he landed on his head for some reason) have stirred up one of the most recurring discussions in wrestling: Is wrestling too dangerous today?
On the surface, this is a dumb argument. Wrestling is inherently dangerous, and anyone who wrestles regularly understands the risks they take to their physical health by getting in the ring. The idea that wrestling can ever be done “safely” is a true fantasy–if it does not involve a little bit of danger, it isn’t really pro wrestling.
At the same time, there is obviously a middle ground where wrestling can be more or less dangerous depending on a variety of factors, those factors include things such as:
- The experience level of the wrestlers
- The fatigue/physical state of the wrestlers and their bodies
- The safety of the surroundings (ring quality, nearby medical personnel, etc.)
- Athletic training knowledge, recovery methods and treatment
- Athleticism/flexibility of the wrestlers
- The danger of the particular moves
For some reason, though, whenever this discussion comes up, nobody ever seems to mention any other factors except the last one. I’ll publish Regal’s comments in full to give everyone the proper context.
“I stay off here but was alerted to something to day that has alarmed me. I don’t read any comments so don’t waste your time trying to argue or justify your very wrong opinions on this. I broke my neck twice,9/93 in ring and a car wreck in ‘97 and stupidly never told anyone. And I was taught properly how to bridge and not land on the top of my head. It’s a skill that maybe 99.9 % of people don’t know or will ever learn anymore. I kept going somehow but knew all the tricks that again people don’t learn now and watch film and just copy. After Misawa San passed from his neck problems I thought it would stop this nonsense but it’s got worse and whenever I talk to people about them doing it it’s “well it doesn’t hurt….” Believe me it will.
I have people close to me now, Bryan being one, who is suffering daily like myself from his neck. It’s a daily misery and sleep and every other aspect of your life is more than hard. Although people use the term tough about me you’ll never hear me say that as I’m not and don’t think I am or have ever been. Money and whatever nonsense fame is supposed to be is not worth the pain or supposed two evening glory you get from these ridiculous moves dropping yourself on your head. The vast majority of fans don’t know the difference between a vertical suplex and a brainbuster and that’s a far tamer move than many I see now. I’m 57 and become less relevant every day but fame has never been my thing so most of you doing this STUPID stuff are not going to listen to me but hopefully a few do. Stop it now if you want a decent quality of life after Wrestling because that part of your life will be over before you know it and wrestling done right is hard enough but broken necks or death are not something you should think is tough or cool. It’s idiotic thinking.”
Regal’s comments are not too different from many other older wrestler comments that have been made for generations. Older, often-retired wrestlers, who are living with the impacts of decades spent wrestling, telling the younger, current generation that they need to slow down so that they don’t deal with the life-long injuries that the older wrestler is now suffering from.
Regal, like many of those wrestlers, though, falls into the problematic trap of talking almost exclusively about the moves wrestlers are taking, and while he never mentions Fletcher by name, it’s probably not a coincidence that Regal made those comments after Worlds End, when Fletcher’s bump was being shared by concern trolls everywhere.
This Kyle Fletcher Sleeper Superplex bump was so DISGUSTING… that even Bryan Danielson lost his mind on commentary.
A REAL SICKO JUST LIKE US.pic.twitter.com/xXVNkfoWNg
— Drainmaker (@DrainBamager) December 29, 2025
It’s obvious that wrestling today incorporates a greater variety of complicated moves and high-spots than in previous generations. It’s easy to see that happening on pretty much any wrestling show in the world, and so it is easy for anyone to draw the lazy conclusion that wrestling is inherently more dangerous than it once was, and thus the wrestlers themselves are putting themselves at higher risk for long-term injury.
What so many people fail to take into account is the many, many different ways in which wrestling is safer today than it has been in any past era, and that those changes can easily make up the difference in the individual moves being a higher risk.
The biggest and most obvious difference is the number of matches an individual wrestler works, particularly American wrestlers working on television like those in AEW and WWE. A majority of injuries in wrestling come not from one, tragic incident of misfortune, but from wear-and-tear, years spent bumping in the ring on necks, backs, shoulders and pectorals. The more matches you work, even doing a “safe” style, the more likely you are going to pick-up an injury, especially when recovery time is limited on the road.
To use Regal as an example, in 1993, the year he first broke his neck, he wrestled 119 matches according to Cagematch.net. He also never told anyone, never rested his broken neck, and kept working to the tune of 134 matches the following year in 1994.
In 2025, Kyle Fletcher wrestled 47 matches total, and in 2024 he wrestled 50 total matches, and the year before that, he wrestled 82 matches. Not only is that significantly fewer matches, but it also is spread out over the course of a year, working roughly one match a week, giving the body a much greater time to recover than in Regal (or any other past wrestler’s era). In Regal’s era, he was tasked with working a match one night, piling into a car and then driving a far distance to the next show and doing another match the following night, followed by the same routine the next night.
Anyone that knows anything about exercise science will tell you how important recovery is to avoid long-term injury. Soreness or fatigue is your body telling you that it is time to stop doing whatever you are doing. While I’m sure current wrestlers like Fletcher have plenty of soreness and fatigue from wrestling, they have a far better chance of handling it appropriately than wrestlers of the past.
By his own admission, Regal didn’t tell anyone about his broken neck and kept working, often relying on painkillers to block out the excruciating pain and continuing to work. People can talk about head drops being dangerous all they want, but it is nothing compared to the vicious injury/painkiller cycle that the wrestling industry was stuck in for generations.
I say this not to cast any individual blame on Regal, that was simply the way the business was. Hundreds, if not thousands, of wrestlers are guilty of ignoring the pain they were in, swallowing a pill, and gutting it out to make it to the next town. It was an extremely toxic lifestyle that wrestlers lived, and it sadly has the body count of premature deaths to prove it.
Other factors are also in play, particularly the athleticism of the individual performer. As Kenny Omega wrote in response to Regal, “As athletes, we aren’t all created equally. As responsible adults, we need to be realistic and know our own physical limits. I’d have to give my head a shake if I wanted to try a twisting shooting star, but I’d never say a word to Pac.”
Omega’s point is very poignant, and is something often dismissed when it comes to safety discussions. Part of what makes a great athlete a great athlete is the ability to do things with ease that would be very dangerous for a less-athletic person to attempt. If I (or any other non-amazing athlete) attempted to do what Simon Biles does on a balance beam, I would get severely injured.
There are plenty of amazing athletes in past generations of wrestling, but it’s obvious to anyone watching that the highest-level of wrestlers today, such as Fletcher, have a level of speed, agility, and coordination that very few other wrestlers possess.
So while it seems unlikely that “I’ll take a sleeper suplex off the top rope and land my shoulder and not my head” would be a good idea, wrestlers like Fletcher have the athleticism to pull it off seamlessly.
Focusing on moves as a way to claim wrestling is too dangerous today is low-hanging fruit–it’s an easy thing to point out that anyone with an IQ over 60 could grasp as a concept.
The issue is that it almost never takes into account the way the industry has changed for the better that has made it much safer, and in fact allowed wrestlers to take the kind of risks in the ring they would have never taken in prior generations.
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