Kevin Nash thinks seven years is as long as a wrestler’s body can take before the damage becomes permanent.
The number came up on Kliq This, which Nash hosts with Sean Oliver, after Oliver made the point that every wrestler who puts real time into the business ends up wrecked, regardless of where they worked on the card.
“I think it’s seven. Seven years to me is like that’s it.”
He said the figure depends on how a wrestler is used rather than how long they last.
“Unless it’s seven. If it’s like Goldberg and you start right in the ring, your time is you’re f***ed quick.”
He said Goldberg’s problem was the opposite of a lack of conditioning.
“The thing with Bill was, Bill had already played, you know, he was all SEC defensive end. He played pro football. Bill’s problem was he was so explosive. He just tore stuff. I think he tore his abdomen when he was cutting in the NFL.”
Goldberg had been a defensive tackle at Georgia and played for the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers before a torn abdominal muscle ended his football career. He then debuted in WCW in 1997 and became the company’s top act within a year, working a style built almost entirely on explosive power and matches that often ended in minutes. His first run lasted about six years before he left the business in 2004, and he was in and out of it after that rather than working a full schedule.
Nash debuted in September 1990 and wrestled his last match in January 2020, close to thirty years rather than seven. He has described elsewhere in the same episode tearing his quadriceps at 42, spending 40 days in a wheelchair after it, and having both knees replaced since.
He did not dispute his co-host’s wider point that the damage is not confined to the people working the main events.
Nash has returned to this subject repeatedly on the podcast. He has argued that wrestling has now lost the sense that two people are having a fight, and that the harder styles cannot be worked into a full-time schedule, using a Samoa Joe and Necro Butcher pairing as an example of something nobody could do 300 days a year.
He has also said WWE should pay for Rhea Ripley to have treatment abroad, having gone that route himself when he was told operating was the only option.
Several other people have made related comments this month about how much wrestlers do. The Undertaker has said the current roster is the greatest collection of athletes the business has produced but that many of them forget storytelling, and has warned about unnecessary risk. AJ Styles said his 19-year-old son is taking chances he does not need to take.
Cody Rhodes pushed back on that argument, saying some veterans telling younger wrestlers to do less do so because they could never do more, and that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Nash is 67. He worked as Diesel in WWF from 1993 to 1996, holding the WWF Championship for just under a year, then left for WCW and formed the nWo with Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan. He wrestled on and off for two decades after the point he says a body has had enough, including a WWE return in 2011.
He is a two-time WWE Hall of Famer, inducted as an individual in 2015 and as part of the nWo in 2020.
Goldberg wrestled his final match in July 2025, losing to Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship in Atlanta. He was vocal after the match about his speech getting cut from the broadcast, although it was released in full on social media.
