Ex-WWE Star Not Returning “In This Lifetime”
A former WWE star is emphatically never going back to the company.
Former WWE Tag Team Champion Mike Rotunda might be best known to you as one-half of the US Express, a member of the Varsity Club, Michael Wallstreet, or Irwin R. Schyster depending on when you became a wrestling fan.
Mike Rotunda has an unenviable place in WWE history as he and Barry Windham were the first stars ever to lose a title at WrestleMania when The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff defeated the US Express for the WWE Tag Team Championship at the inaugural event in 1985.
Rotunda re-emerged in the company as the slimy tax man Irwin R. Schyster in April 1991 for a four-year spell that saw him form the successful Money Inc. team with The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. He then spent time in WCW, NJPW, and AJPW before having his retirement show in the famed Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan in 2004.
He returned to WWE as a road agent in 2006 and he held that job until September 2020 when he was officially released from the company after spending several months on furlough as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking on a K&S WrestleFest virtual signing, Mike Rotunda was asked if he ever planned to return to WWE in any capacity and it appears it’s not something he’s keen to do:
“Not in this lifetime. I’m pretty much burned out. 40 years is enough. Between wrestling…23 wrestling and 13 producing. It just felt like 40 years.”
Later in the signing, Rotunda revealed the extent to which his body has suffered after all those years in the ring:
“I had my left hip replaced and I really need to get my right hip and right knee replaced. You get beat up.”
Does Mike Rotunda still have a family connection in WWE?
Mike Rotunda’s sons Taylor and Windham are better known to WWE fans as Bo Dallas and Bray Wyatt respectively. Bray Wyatt returned to WWE in October 2022 to great fanfare but since then he has only competed once at the 2023 Royal Rumble and his planned feud with Bobby Lashley at WrestleMania 39 was scrapped as soon as it began.
Former NXT Champion Bo Dallas was released in April 2021 amid cuts to the roster in the company at the time. However, many believe that Bo Dallas was the man behind the mask playing Uncle Howdy, a character introduced after Bray Wyatt’s return. With uncertainty over Wyatt’s future in WWE, that could mean there is no official return for Dallas.