Spike Dudley opens up about moment he knew it was time to leave wrestling
Appearing on a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Spike Dudley opened up about his life now and when he knew it was time to stop wrestling.
The 55-year-old Dudley, whose real name is Matt Hyson, currently works in finance for Fidelity Investments, where he is part of the transition services team. It’s not something that would have been Dudley’s ideal dream job as a kid, but he says Fidelity is a great company and he’s found his niche there. Dudley is married and has two “awesome” children.
He pointed to a 2010 indie match against Sabu as when he knew it was time to get out of wrestling. Dudley has made some appearances and had some matches since then, but having his arm sliced in this match made him realize that he couldn’t have this career anymore while being a responsible parent.
“I don’t really have one. I’m out of it,” Dudley said about his current relationship with wrestling. “When it was time to get out, it was time to get out. My wife was pregnant and — okay, so this is what happened. This is how I officially got out of the business. My wife was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, first kid. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is a great promotion. It’s no longer there, but at the time, it was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly, aside from like ECW, this group is the group that’s closest to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. And they used me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match against Sabu — RIP. I drove up there, it’s about a five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my arm sliced. That’s my Sabu scar. It wasn’t bleeding that bad, it was a slice…
“So I saw it, and I just taped it up, and I got into my car. and I drove home. And I got home at like, four or five in the morning. My wife, she’s like, ‘Are you okay? Everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I fell asleep. And I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I was like, ‘Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency room.’ But then that was the moment where I realized, ‘Okay, I’m going to be a father. I can’t be doing this crazy stuff anymore.’ Because physically, that’s what I did, was take bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are, you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore. So I was 40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye opener that okay, I can’t do this and be a responsible parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it quits. I had a couple of matches after, but that was the signal that you’re done with the business.”
Dudley said he never wanted to miss time with his family because he was driving to an indie show for $100-200. And he didn’t want to be like some of the legends he had seen who were still working indies solely because they needed to make money to pay their rent.
“With a kid coming, I was like, I can’t do this forever. There’s a shelf life for everything. I’m not Hulk Hogan, I’m not The Rock, I’m not John Cena. And I certainly didn’t want to be an agent, you know, doing that crap, playing politics, and all of that. Because the business was changing to a level that I don’t understand. Like, I don’t understand today’s business,” Dudley said.
“If I were still in it, I don’t think I’d be alive. I’ll be honest with you. I think I would have either drank myself to death or I would have taken some sort of crippling bump. There’s a difference — when you’re taking the bumps, when your heart’s in it, it’s no big deal. But when you’re taking the bumps out of desperation, it turns on your body. And I was getting to the point where I was taking the bumps, I was blading, I was doing all of this out of anger, out of desperation, out of some last hope to stay relevant. And it wasn’t working for me emotionally, physically, obviously. It was just — I was done. I was done.”
He doesn’t have much connection to wrestling anymore, but Dudley was brought in by WWE to attend WrestleMania 40 weekend in 2024 since the event was taking place in ECW’s home city of Philadelphia.
Van Vliet asked Dudley about a potential WWE Hall of Fame induction, given that he was a memorable character for ECW and WWE in the late 1990s and into the 2000s.
“I have no idea, and don’t really care. That’s not for me to decide. I mean, [with] my body of work, probably not,” he responded. “That’s not for me to decide. I don’t know how they figure out who’s Hall of Fame or whatnot, you know what I mean?”
Dudley added that an induction would be cool and he wouldn’t turn it down, but he doesn’t consider himself a Hall of Famer.
The full podcast episode can be watched below:
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.