WWE's Triple H Announces Retirement Following Heart Surgery

WWE legend Triple H will not perform in the ring again.

ESPN reports one of the best-known professional wrestling stars of the last several decades told Stephen A. Smith on ESPN's First Take on Friday.

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

"I will never wrestle again," Levesque, who is also an executive vice president with WWE, said per ESPN. "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."

The 52-year-old made his WWE debut in 1995 and is a 14-time world champion.

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

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

The outlet reports his last match took place on an untelevised card in Tokyo on June 29, 2019, while his last televised match was a few weeks earlier on June 7, 2019, against longtime rival Randy Orton in Saudi Arabia.