William Regal Sets The Record Straight On His 2008 WWE Suspension

William Regal has battled his demons over the course of his life and is seemingly on the winning end of the struggle.

The current manager of AEW's Blackpool Combat Club has had his ups and his downs on his long road to recovery, and he recently set the record straight on a May 2008 suspension from WWE. Regal had just won the King of the Ring tournament when he failed a drug test which led to a 60-day suspension, but according to the former-WWE Intercontinental Champion, the flagged test wasn't as clear-cut as reports at the time made it sound.

"I still don't know what it was about," Regal told his Gentleman Villain co-host Matt Koon. "Something showed up on my drug test and again there's been things said about me 'oh he relapsed' no, that's not true at all," Regal continued, calling any talk of relapse as "absolutely false."

"Nobody printed anything about what happened to me at that time because nobody knew," Regal said, describing a phone call with Dr. David Black. Dr. Black, the president of Aegis Sciences, who was put in charge of WWE's drug testing in the wake of the Chris Benoit murder-suicide in 2007.

"It was a fraction of a slight something showed up on my drug test," Regal said.

"First of all," Regal chuckled, "if you knew the amount of drugs I used to take, I don't take a fraction of anything." Regal went on to compare a fraction of a drug in his system to "throwing a sausage up a tunnel."

"I'm either going proper off or I'm not going in there."

Regal said that he took the conversation "as high up" as he could get in WWE's corporate structure. The unnamed higher-up said the test didn't "make sense" but that the company couldn't do anything for "publicity reasons."

"It was a very sensitive time at that time because it wasn't too long after a certain major incident. I think you can figure out what that was," Regal said solemnly, referring to the Benoit family murder-suicide that brought heightened scrutiny on WWE's Wellness Policy. Regal said he didn't want to "drag" the person and the company into it, as Regal felt they'd "done too much for [him]" over the years.

Regal took the suspension "on the chin" and felt that it was a bit of cosmic balance for his younger years. "I got away with murder when I was younger and I just looked at it as maybe this is a bit of payback."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the "Gentleman Villain" podcast and give a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.