Impact Wrestling’s Alberto El Patrón, formerly known as WWE’s Alberto Del Rio, also known as the guy who picked a fight with a Ninja Turtle one time, has hinted before that he’s close to done with professional wrestling. After all, he has a lot of other stuff going on. He’s involved with the Latino-focused MMA promotion Combate Americas, of which he was briefly president. He also started a Mexican restaurant in Texas, but that didn’t work out too well.
According to WrestleZone, Alberto said during a recent Impact Wrestling media call that he’s planning to keep wrestling through 2018, but may have his retirement tour in 2019. He contrasted “real wrestling fans,” who he says he loves, with “keyboard warriors and the dark side of the business,” which he says are the factors that give him doubts about staying in the business.
There is certainly a dark side to the business, and he’s no doubt been on the receiving end of a lot of it, like when WWE fired him for reacting violently to a racist remark. But since leaving WWE a second time after being suspended for a wellness policy violation, Alberto has seemed to embody that dark side himself, no-showing for matches and finding himself in violent altercations around the world, including one with his then-fiancee Paige in an airport that led to a domestic violence investigation, although no charges were filed.
But now Paige has reportedly split from him and made her WWE return to a huge pop from the crowd, which probably didn’t thrill her ex, who’s had plenty of negative things to say about the company since his departure. Alberto, meanwhile, is still wrestling for Impact, but if he’s been soured on the industry as a whole, it’s not hard to see why.
