Jake Hager On Retiring From Wrestling: I Had Accomplished Everything That I Really Cared About And Wanted To Move On

Jake Hager discusses his decision to retire from pro wrestling.

Earlier this month, Jake Hager revealed that he had retired from the world of pro wrestling and had begun to run a trucking company in Florida. Now, he has discussed the decision to retire further.

While speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet in a recent interview, Hager was asked if he is fully retired from wrestling, with Hager confirming it once again.

“Retired baby, Hall of Fame. I used to say before I would go through the curtain in gorilla, ‘You want me in the Hall of Fame?’ Right before the music would hit. That would just be my mentality.”

Chris would then ask Hager why he felt it was time to retire from pro wrestling.

“I had done it since 2006, dedicated a lot of my best parts of my life to the sport, roughly 17-18 years, very grateful. Had a good gig for most of that and blessed to have done it. Because pro wrestling is very tough to get into, and there’s literally hundreds of thousands of people who want to become pro wrestlers, and it’s grown every day. Like I said, I don’t watch it anymore. So I think for me, I had accomplished everything that I really cared about and wanted to move on for the longest time. I always was like, what am I going to do after pro wrestling? What trade do I have? And this is a great story, I rode with Dutch Mantell for years, and I’ll put winning the World Heavyweight Championship up there with riding with Dutch Mantell, it was that important to my career, the things that I learned, the things that he taught me, and just his f*cking funny phrases. The guy has just a way with words. He could insult you and you’re like, Thank you Dutch. But he was always like ‘Jack, whatever you do from here, you gotta use what you did in pro wrestling at the WWE, the way they use you. You gotta use that background in whatever you venture into next.’ And if you think about it like that, advice always stuck with me. Okay, I could be a salesperson because I can talk on the mic in front of live people, or I could be endearing and be vulnerable at the same time. So that could help me with something else, but pretty much with pro wrestling, you’re a professional driver. You are gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then you’re home Wednesday, home 36 hours, and then you’re back out on Friday, and every single one of those days, you’re in a rental car, and you are driving town to town, making the town. So that really stuck with me, and it kind of like influenced me to go into the truck driving business, because I’m already a professional driver. I told Vince this once, the wrestling I’ll do for free, you got to pay me for the driving. And so it kind of led me to where I’m at now, and I’m excited.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Hager spoke about Goldberg. You can read more about that here.

Thank you to Chris Van Vliet for the quotes.