Michelle McCool Says It Broke Her Heart To Retire From WWE
Michelle McCool has explained why it broke her heart to retire from WWE because it was something she enjoyed doing so much.
The WWE Universe was introduced to Michelle McCool in 2004 as a contestant in the first Diva Search. Even though she didn’t win the fan-voted competition, she impressed WWE officials enough to get a contract. McCool accomplished a lot as the first woman (then known as “divas”) to win the WWE Divas and WWE Women’s Championships. McCool held both titles twice in her career.
In 2009, McCool formed a heel pairing Layla that was called Laycool. They were sometimes accompanied by Vickie Guerrero as well. Laycool was known for being mean girls that also got along very well since they actually shared the Women’s Title at one point.
When she was 31 years old in 2011, McCool retired as a WWE superstar. She also married WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker in 2010 and the couple has two children together.
At the 2023 Royal Rumble, McCool was sitting in the crowd with her daughter. McCool’s music hit as the 25th entrant in the match. McCool acted like she had no idea about it and then went into the ring wearing her Uggs boots rather than traditional wrestling gear. She lasted about 13 minutes in the match until she was eliminated.
During a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio, McCool spoke about retiring when she did while talking about how her “Diva Era” of WWE often times gets ignored or skipped over.
“You hear about the Women’s Evolution and of course, you hear about the Attitude Era with Trish and Lita and Jazz and Ivory and Victoria which all were amazing, obviously. Then our little Diva era kind of just gets skipped over.”
As she continued, Michelle McCool noted that they had to fight to get TV time and longer matches while noting that even her retirement match wasn’t as long as she would have liked.
“We had to fight and claw. I think even on my retirement match, I think we were given 12 minutes with entrances. So probably, you know, nine minutes of wrestling, and we thought that was a rib, like, we’re getting this much time, because normally we had two or three.”
Michelle McCool would go on to say that it broke her heart to retire from WWE.
“I grew up loving the business, and when you love something so much, and then you start not enjoying it as much because of whether it’s, you know, obviously I married a top guy, right? So clearly, I got everything because of who my husband is and not the hard work that I put in. There’s that aspect of it.”
“Then there’s just all this chaos around all the time. We really were just fighting for our spot. We didn’t know if we would be on TV the next week, so it was hard, but I wouldn’t change it. I’m not afraid to fight. I’m not afraid to work for what I’ve got. In fact, we’re just lecturing our daughter about that, but it was hard, and it was stressful, and it broke my heart to retire.”