Bruce Hart claims that Tyson Kidd's wrestling career is over, suggests WWE refused to pay for an ambulance

The broken neck that WWE superstar Tyson Kidd suffered during a dark match with Samoa Joe on the June 1st Monday Night Raw tapings remains a controversial topic.

The true severity of the injury wasn't disclosed until five weeks later when Kidd tweeted a picture of his surgically repaired neck and commented that he was lucky to survive such severe neck trauma:

5% of people survive this injury. 16 staples, 4 screws and a rod later and luckily I survived to tell my story. pic.twitter.com/hXpXpA0aAF

— TJ Wilson (@KiddWWE) July 7, 2015

Indeed, Dave Meltzer in the July 20th Wrestling Observer Newsletter likened the injury to the one Christopher Reeve suffered in a horse riding accident on May 27th, 1995, that left him a quadriplegic. It is believed that Kidd's thickly muscled neck saved him from suffering a similar or even worse fate.

Although the broken neck is generally believed to have been a freak accident, Bret Hart (the uncle of Kidd's wife Natalya) blamed the risky nature of Joe's finishing move the Muscle Buster and criticised WWE for not giving them enough time to plan out their match beforehand:

"It seems to me there was a lot of poor planning involved in that injury. I don’t know whose fault it is or why an injury like that happened, but someone is accountable. The WWE has done a lot in the last few years to improve conditions for wrestlers. They have doctors there and they give wrestlers adequate time to prepare, but in looking at what happened with Tyson Kidd, clearly there is still a lot of room for improvement.

[The Muscle Buster is] extremely dangerous. The move that Samoa Joe did was reckless, and the way they rushed that match beforehand in the back without giving Tyson time to prepare was mistake."

It should be noted that during his 16 year wrestling career, this was the first time that Joe had ever seriously hurt an opponent with the Muscle Buster, so it seems unfair to blame the move itself.

Now, another of Natalya's uncles, Bruce Hart, has given an interview with the Main Event Madness podcast where he had much harsher criticism than even his brother Bret about WWE's handling of the injury, including alleging that WWE initially refused to pay for an ambulance to take Kidd to a hospital to get checked out:

"I was taken aback when I heard about, just the way WWE handled it. He injured his neck quite badly in that match with Samoa Joe. I was told when he [Tyson Kidd] was in the dressing room after, one agent, he indifferently said 'go take your shower'. [Kidd] said 'no my neck is really f***ed up' and I was told [the agent] said 'we're not going to pay for an ambulance' and they were almost making it out like he was a hypochondriac. My niece Nattie, his wife, they said if you wanted to go to the hospital it's your choice. She set out for the hospital and got lost in San Antonio and she finally got there after some kind of driving around. When they got there, they did the CT scans and MRIs and immediately determined that it was a near fatal injury. It was a fraction of an inch from either being a fatality or a paralysis from the neck down type thing."

Thankfully, according to Bruce, once WWE became fully aware of the severity of the injury, the company went out of their way to provide Kidd with the best treatment, although clearly that would not forgive them for their initial scepticism and frugalness if these allegations are true:

"They notified the WWE of this, and I was told there were only 3 or 4 places in the US where they can perform this type of microsurgery that would stabilize and do what they needed to for his neck. They had to at that point charter a some kind of air ambulance from San Antonio to Florida, which was the closest place that did that type of surgery. I heard that cost $100,000 and they had to fly him back for that."

However, Bruce claims that even with that specialist treatment Kidd's wrestling career is certainly over and with such a prognosis WWE's concern for his recovery has disappeared too:

"At this point I was told they haven't made any contact, WWE hasn't called, some of the wrestlers have called TJ, as I know him. At this point as far as i've been told it's certain his career's over and that he's fortunate to not be a paraplegic."

It should be noted that Bruce Hart has been an outspoken critic of WWE's for many, many years and his track record for credibility isn't the best. Former Cageside Seats writer David Bixenspan dubbed Bruce's autobiography Straight From The Hart "entertaining, but problematic", due to the book being "filled with statements that often come off as pretty out there, whether it's bad memory or an agenda or something else."

Unsurprisingly, given that he's still employed by WWE, Tyson Kidd has already taken to Twitter to deny Bruce Hart's claims in an attempt to kill the story dead:

Just for the record I haven't had contact with Bruce Hart in over a decade. End of story, rumor mill over!

— TJ Wilson (@KiddWWE) September 4, 2015

I wouldn't be surprised if Tyson Kidd's claim that he hasn't spoken to Bruce Hart recently is true, given that the Hart family is no longer a tight knit group, but given that Bruce is related to his wife Natalya, it also seems highly likely that Bruce has spoken to people who have talked with Tyson. Which suggests that there may be some truth to Bruce Hart's claims, unless he's made them all up wholesale.