After suffering a career-altering neck injury that has kept him out of in-ring action since 2022, Big E officially confirmed last month that he is retired from professional wrestling. Despite no longer being an active competitor, Big E has continued to be involved on WWE’s programming, having been an analyst on Premium Live Event panels and a brand ambassador, but he has no desire to return to a full-time schedule. Speaking with “The Takedown on SI,” Big E explained that he’s been offered a role to be on WWE’s commentary desk, but has declined due to the company’s heavy travel commitments.

“I will say I think the idea of being on the road every single week for an extended period of time is something that I’m not really open to doing right now,” he said. “And God bless the amount of people who’ve come to me and or even tweeted at WWE, ‘Get him on commentary. He deserves to be on commentary.’ Look, I’ve been approached multiple times by people within the company, people who’ve gone to bat for me … But once you’re able to get off that hamster wheel and you realize that man, I have my weekends back again or when I first started dating Kristen, my fiancee, I was able to come out for a chunk of 10 days for two weeks and man, life is good out here. Life is good off the grind.”

Big E continued to explain that WWE play-by-play announcer Michael Cole has been one of his biggest supporters backstage and is thankful for being complimentary towards his work, but still prefers his current role over going down the commentary route.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “The Takedown on SI” with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.