WWE star Triple H announces retirement from in-ring action after heart surgery

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Triple H, one of the best-known professional wrestling stars of the last several decades, will not perform in the ring again, he told Stephen A. Smith on ESPN's First Take on Friday.

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The WWE legend, whose real name is Paul Levesque, went into heart failure last September following a bout with viral pneumonia,

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he said, and there were moments when he was not sure if he would make it. Levesque, 52, made his WWE debut in 1995 and is a 14-time world champion.

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"I will never wrestle again," Levesque, who is also an executive vice president with WWE, said. "First of all, I have a defibrillator in my chest, which, you know, probably not a good idea for me to get zapped on live TV."

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Levesque was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 with his late-1990s group D-Generation X. He has been a five-time world heavyweight champion, a five-time WWE Intercontinental champion and the winner of two Royal Rumble matches.

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The New Hampshire native and Connecticut resident was one of the most successful wrestlers of the 2000s.

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Levesque told ESPN's First Take that he was suffering from viral pneumonia in September and his wife, WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon, noticed he was coughing up blood

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He went to the hospital, where doctors discovered fluid in his lungs and around his heart.

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Levesque said doctors told him his heart was working at a fraction of full strength and he was in "bad" heart failure.

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