That was Kevin Fertig, who came up from OVW (WWE's development camp at the time) as Mordicei, but the gimmick bombed, and he wasn't ready skill wise to be on the main roster, so he went back to OVW, he then returned to the main roster as Kevin Thorn (A Vampire character) in ECW. After a while, WWE wanted him to drop the gimmick, use his real name, and become just a regular heel, which Fertig didn't want to do, so he asked for his release and left. Since then, he has been in the independants wrestling as Kevin Thorn and is using his vampire gimmick again.

Wrestling hurts. Plain and simple. There are some moves you can't fake. Wrestlers are trained on how to take the moves, and how to fall properly. They train all the time. When a wrestler is gone for any ammount of time from the ring, they have to re-train to get rid of what is called "ring rust". To make sure their timing is still correct when it comes to taking moves.

The only "real injury" rule is the "X". If the referee throws his arms up the air in a "X", then that means a serious (real) injury has taken place. The match is immediately stopped and the medics are brought out.

If someone is carried off on a stretcher after a huge beat down, they are just selling and are not really seriously hurt, unless the ref "threw the X."

Though, there have a been a few times where performers have been seriosly hurt and finished the match. Two of the most notible:

During the early rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin, he had an important match against Owen Hart. During the match, while Hart performed a piledriver, Austin was too low and took the full impact to the top of his head and neck. He received a "stinger", which is a spinal injury where your spine gets compressed and you are temporarly paralized. Instead of calling the match, Hart tried to buy some time for Austin to recover by showing off and drawing boos from the crowd. When it appeared that Austin wouldn't recover fast enough. Austin could only use his arms and his legs were useless, so Hart basically pinned himself by falling into a schoolboy rollup and Austin won the match.



2nd was Austin and HHH vs Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. HHH mistepped and tore the quad muscle in his leg. (Tore it completely off the bone, and it rolled up his leg.) Instead of "X'ing" the match he told everyone to continue, and even allowed Jericho to place him in the "Walls Of Jericho" submission, which puts considerable strain on the legs.

Can't find the match, but you can see the injury happen in this video WWE made about HHH's recovery process:

It's called MMA.

I believe a company in Japan tried to do a "legit" wrestling legue and the injuries were overwhelming.

I hope Shawn can be stronger willed then Flair, Hogan, and the like. He had a perfect end to his career, and there is no reason he should ever need to set foot in the ring as a wrestler.

If he needs money in the future, I'm sure WWE would welcome him back with open arms, and he would make a great GM or Manager, and use his natural charisma to aid future stars.