An interview with Tomko.
For periods in WWE and TNA Wrestling, Christian Cage and Tyson Tomko were paired together. That was reflected on by Tomko when he joined René Duprée’s Café De René livestream. He is not sure if he would have made it as far as he did in either WWE or TNA without Christian.
I love Christian (Cage). Without Christian, I don’t even know if I make it as far as I do, both in WWE and TNA.
For 14 years, Tomko was an active in-ring performer. He spoke candidly about the injuries he suffered and surgeries he underwent that stemmed from his time in wrestling. He added that he cannot blame WWE because he was lying to them about the severity of his injuries and would tell them he was good to go when he was not.
I’ve been doing great. The point of that message is I’ve been doing great. Taking care of my body, got all of my stuff fixed. I’ve currently had two hip replacements because the first one didn’t work well and we’ll circle back to that. You might remember, a lot of people don’t know this story, that I broke my pelvis in developmental and I was literally supposed to go start television the next week because as you guys know, I was a bodyguard for Limp Bizkit and Limp Bizkit was playing WrestleMania and I was going to be flying out that week, something was gonna start. So I’m in there with Matt Morgan — this is not Matt’s fault by the way — we’re doing something simple and I ended up taking a bump and I guess it was kind of like, he was going down and right when I was coming up, I hit the back of my head, knocked myself. My hamstring went back and basically it’s called an avulsion fracture where the femur goes like this into your pelvis and the hamstring just ripped the pelvis apart, and you (René Duprée) remember, I finished the match. I think I was tagging with Seven. Rolled out of the side of the ring, I’m like, ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ Then we go to the hospital. Long story short, they put me in traction, but that started. I probably should have never wrestled after that. They were like, ‘I don’t know if it’s gonna heal right. Probably.’ But I basically lied to everybody and said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I think I was calling the office like two days later… not wanting to lose my job, you know? So, that’s what started it. My whole career, I had my femur just rubbing on what they call the acetabulum joint and this knot was created. Getting cortisone shots once every nine months and every six months and you know, try to get through that so you can clearly figure out that natural progression of where that goes and then you have the knee injuries and all that stuff but so, I’ve had four knee surgeries, one right knee replacement, the two hip replacements, four shoulder surgeries and then I had a shoulder replacement two years ago. Of course, a fractured neck and fractured back but that wasn’t as bad. Those are the major ones. All the concussions and then, as many torn muscles as you can imagine so… it’s really fake man (he laughed), and that’s funny. Here’s the irony: When I was in Japan, I didn’t get hurt, because the strong style and it’s like you’re going in there — the States is a little different. It’s like, the whole time I was in Japan, never got hurt. It’s a lot more physical.
I tore my meniscus in Europe in a match with Shawn Michaels. Happened in the match. Basically said, ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ because I had torn my meniscus in college, a little bit, so I was familiar with what the surgery was gonna look like. You can get back pretty quick but I said, ‘Yeah, it’s nothing. I’m gonna be fine!’ I’m taping it up and I get back and they’re like, ‘You need surgery.’ So, this is a good story too. So I go get the meniscus surgery. They’re saying, ‘It’s gonna be three-to-four months. It’s three on the short side.’ I call the office at five weeks talking about, ‘I’m ready.’ ‘Did you get released?’ ‘Yep, I’m released. I’m good.’ Because I’m doing hindus, I’m good, right? And it’s painful but I’m good and then I get back to TV and they had already replaced me as The Problem Solver. They had Viscera in the role and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ I go to Stephanie (McMahon), I’m like, ‘Oh, we’ll just make it for one night.’ ‘Can do you a promo?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ So Christian (Cage) does, ‘This is my one-night Problem Solver.’ So then I was like, they’re definitely trying to replace me so I’m never gonna tell ‘em my knee’s jacked up so, I can’t be the only one that was doing that. Well at least at our level. If you’re main event (then) you can probably get away with telling them you’re hurt…
The last time that the Jacksonville, Florida native wrestled was in 2013.
Tomko’s former partner Christian Cage is with All Elite Wrestling and is scheduled to challenge for the AEW World Championship at Double or Nothing.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Café De René with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
