10 Biggest WWE 'Never Say Never' Moments

Of all the adages in wrestling, ‘never say never’ rings truest. Whenever a wrestler says they are never going to do business with WWE again or even never step inside the squared circle again, the claim often turns out to be untrue eventually.

A pro-wrestling retirement wouldn’t be the same if that wrestler didn’t come back for at least one match after ‘hanging up his boots’ and despite how bitter relations within WWE can get, even the most unlikely wrestlers have ended up reconciling with the organisation.

We’ve seen some highly unlikely WWE moments over the years, some that the people involved never thought would ever actually happen.

Here are the 10 Biggest WWE ‘Never Say Never’ Moments.

10. Scott Steiner inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame

Scott Steiner’s WWE return in 2002 promised so much but, sadly, delivered so little.

Big Poppa Pump’s feud with World Heavyweight Champion Triple H was entertaining, but the two stunk the joint out in their two pay-per-view outings and Steiner subsequently went tumbling down the card.

By the time he was released in the summer of 2004, WWE had basically been paying him to stay at home, because they didn’t have anything for him and felt like he wasn’t worth the risk.

The Genetic Freak spent the 18 years after his departure talking smack about not just the company, also saying some very personal and derogatory things about not just The Cerebral Assassin, but his wife Stephanie and Vince McMahon as well.

Frequently laughing off the idea of accepting a Hall of Fame induction offer and rebuffing any attempt to get him to sign a legends contract, the announcement that Scott would be a part of the 2022 class of the WWE Hall of Fame alongside brother Rick took everyone by surprise.

The fact that his nephew currently works for the company, coupled with some health scares, may have convinced The Big Bad Booty Daddy to accept the honour, just a few years after he was banned from the ceremony.

9. The Ultimate Warrior gets closure

Few splits in WWE history have been as acrimonious as the one between the company and The Ultimate Warrior.

Jim Hellwig and Vince McMahon parted ways in strained circumstances on multiple occasions and things seemed irrevocably broken after the last time in 1996.

Bad blood ensued and lawsuits flew thick and fast as each side tried to disparage the other while attempting to gain control of the Ultimate Warrior intellectual property. Things got so bad between the two that WWE even released their very own smear campaign DVD – the Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior – in 2005.

Warrior’s inclusion in one of the WWE 2K video games helped open the door for his proper return to the company in 2014, however, aided by Triple H working as an intermediary.

18 years after last wrestling in a WWE ring, The Ultimate Warrior took his rightful place in the WWE Hall of Fame.

Even sweeter, he got to make amends with those who he had badmouthed (and who had badmouthed him) and got to share the moment with his two young daughters. It became all the more poignant when he shockingly passed away just days later.

8. Goldberg returns

Add Goldberg to the list of ex-WCW stars who subsequently made the move to WWE and felt as though they were being punished for having the temerity to earn a living with the competition during the Monday Night Wars.

Big Bill’s WWE run between 2003 and 2004 started with him being forced to don a blonde wig and ended with him being booed out of Madison Square Garden at WrestleMania XX.

In between was a lot of bitterness and frustration at his booking and perceived poor treatment.

After he left, the former World Heavyweight Champion was far from complimentary about his time working for WWE and as the years passed and Goldberg got older, it felt as though the most we could expect from Goldberg was him showing up as a talking head for a WWE-produced documentary.

Like with Ultimate Warrior before, it was an association with video game developers 2K that paved the way for Da Man to come back for a bit of a fantasy warfare and a rematch with Brock Lesnar at the 2016 Survivor Series.

Goldberg would win that match and go on to become a two-time Universal Champion before having what is currently his final WWE match at Elimination Chamber 2022.

7. Eric Bischoff shows up on WWE Raw

Former Senior Vice President of WCW Eric Bischoff didn’t just want to beat Vince McMahon and win the Monday Night Wars – he wanted to drive the Genetic Jackhammer out of business, by any means necessary.

He would, ultimately, prove unsuccessful in this attempt, as WWE pulled away in the war and, in March of 2001, ended up buying WCW from parent company Time Warner.

That threatened to be the end of Easy E as far as the wrestling business was concerned, since there was no longer any viable competition he could go and work for.

Luckily for him, his old nemesis was interested in having Bischoff on board as an on-screen character and secretly engineered a deal to bring Eric in as the new General Manager of Monday Night War.

When Bischoff showed up unannounced on the July 15th, 2002 episode of Raw, the wrestling world’s jaw collectively dropped.

If any image demonstrated Vince McMahon’s commitment to putting personal issues aside in order to do business, it was the one of him and Eric Bischoff sharing a hug and then a handshake on the flagship show’s stage.

6. Bruno Sammartino inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame

If anyone deserved an induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, it was Bruno Sammartino.

The legend held the WWE Title for an eternity and sold out Madison Square Garden more times than anyone else, as he helped carry the company when it still had an extra W and Vince McMahon Sr. was calling the shots.

After leaving WWE and pretty much retiring from the business, Bruno became a noted and very vocal critic of WWE and Vince McMahon.

He derided what he felt was the widespread abuse of anabolic steroids and felt as though Vince was turning wrestling into a circus full of vulgar characters and unpleasant storylines.

WWE had attempted to extend the olive branch numerous times over the years and had repeatedly invited him to be inducted into their Hall of Fame, but Sammartino refused every time.

It was only in 2013, by which point he was convinced that WWE had done enough to combat the drugs and dialled down the tawdriness of their televised product, that Bruno finally relented and accepted the invite, ending a 20-plus year standoff.

5. Edge returns

If Edge’s career had ended in 2011, while he was reigning as World Heavyweight Champion and after competing in one of the top matches at WrestleMania, he could have retired happy.

The Rated-R Superstar had enjoyed an incredible career and did more than he probably ever imagined he would, leaving a tremendous legacy and body of work behind him.

But the Hall of Famer – who had known his knackered body was on borrowed time – wasn’t satisfied with not being able to end things on his own terms and, many years later, worked hard in order to overturn his prognosis and make the most unlikely return to the squared circle.

It finally happened at the 2020 Royal Rumble, as the Ultimate Opportunist entered the match at number 21 in a spine-tingling moment that is hard to top in the feelgood factor stakes.

Edge had routinely denied that he could ever step back into the ring given the state his neck was in and had looked to have successfully transitioned into a post-wrestling career of acting and podcasting.

But then, just when we thought we knew him, he surprised us all by doing the one thing we believed was impossible.

4. Bret Hart & Vince McMahon bury the hatchet

If anyone has ever had reason not to do business with the McMahons, it’s Bret Hart.

They publicly screwed him on his last night in the company, despite his many years of hard work and dutiful service.

Then they took the p**s out of him for it. Then his brother Owen fell to his death during one of their pay-per-views. Then they took the p**s out of him for Montreal another 30 or 40 times and buried his character via things like their Confidential Show.

Faced with the threat of having his legacy eroded further thanks to a planned ‘Screwed’ DVD, The Hitman – who had been a vocal critic of WWE’s since the 1997 Survivor Series – finally came on board in order to do a DVD retrospective the right way.

Almost eight years after his WWE career ended in infamy and after plenty of back-and-forth mudslinging, a picture of Bret and Vince shaking hands was released.

The DVD release and Hall of Fame induction followed and, in January of 2010, Hart appeared on Monday Night Raw and embraced Shawn Michaels, finally putting Montreal to bed.

3. Sting debuts

After the collapse of WCW, it was inevitable that the promotion’s top stars would all, eventually, make their way to WWE.

One by one we saw them come in, whether it was during the ill-fated Invasion angle or years after the fact.

The one holdout was Sting, who was essentially the heart and soul of the Tuner-owned organisation.

Despite there being several approaches to obtain his services, Sting didn’t like WWE’s on-screen direction and settled into life working for TNA instead.

He seemed happy there and, as the years went by and Steve Borden got older, it seemed less and less likely that we’d see that iconic face paint on WWE television.

Odds were the Stinger would wind up his career working for Dixie Carter, before disappearing into the rafters for good.

His emergence during the main event of the 2014 Survivor Series was a fantastic moment that many fans thought they would never, ever see. There had been no indication that he was on his way in, as WWE kept everything under wraps until the big reveal.

While his run wouldn’t be a success, losing his two pay-per-view matches, Sting is still going strong to this day in All Elite Wrestling.

2. Daniel Bryan gets cleared to wrestle again

Bryan Danielson grafted for an age on the indy and international circuits, finally made it to WWE and succeeded against the odds, when many predicted he would fail. His story is an amazing one, a tale of talent overcoming nonsense and the cream well and truly rising to the top.

His journey was capped off with an emotional world title win in the main event of WrestleMania 30, the start of what promised to be an exciting next chapter in the American Dragon’s career. Sadly, D-Bry’s injury woes began not long after he bagged the gold and would dog him until they eventually took him out of action for good.

It was gutting to see Bryan having to walk away from the thing he loved the most and was best at, and it was clear to see that – entertaining as he was in the role – that being a General Manager wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as kicking people’s heads in.

Miraculously, the bearded wonder was able to eventually get cleared to return to the ring.

The whole time he was on the shelf he never took ‘no’ for an answer and, crucially, never said he would ‘never’ wrestle again.

1. Stone Cold Steve Austin wrestles one more time

‘Retirement’ in wrestling is pretty much non-existent.

Everyone comes back in the end, regardless of how long they’ve been out of the business and whether they’re battered bodies are up to the challenge or not.

As we have watched our heroes return, despite whatever vows they had made to stay away, one wrestling comeback that seemed beyond the realm of probability was Steve Austin.

After all, Stone Cold had called it a day way back in 2003 and seemed content to go out on a WrestleMania classic with The Rock (even if the decision was taken out of his own hands).

There’d been intermittent rumblings that The Texas Rattlesnake might lace up his boots again in the years that followed, but they always turned out to be false alarms.

Yet Austin’s passion for the business never diminished and the desire to go out on his own terms lured him back to the squared circle at WrestleMania 38.

Riding off into the sunset in his beloved Lone Star State, Austin wrestled his first match in 19 years, beating Kevin Owens in a rip-roaring impromptu No Holds Barred bout.

Never say ‘never’, kids.

And that’s the bottom line, because this list said so.