WWE‘s Michael Cole reflects on his wife’s medical condition during his early days in the company, which almost made him quit.
Legendary WWE commentator Michael Cole was the latest guest on the What’s Your Story? With Steph McMahon podcast. During the conversation, he reflected on his wife Yolanda’s kidney failure in 2001 and their desperate search for a donor. He had only started with the company four years before and considered leaving to be with his wife. However, she urged him to continue as they needed the financial backing to support their family.
“The urologist tells her that she’s got 5% left function left in her kidney, and we knew something was wrong for a little bit because you know we were young, late 20s, early 30s. We go out and have some beers or whatever at night. She would literally, after one beer, get really, really sick, and we couldn’t figure out why,” Michael Cole said.
“Find out it was because the kidney wasn’t feeling the upper system,” said Cole. “So she immediately had to go on dialysis, and my wife is 4 foot 11 at this point. She weighed about 95 pounds, and the dialysis almost killed her. It was three days a week.
“Obviously, I’m in a new job where I need to travel, so I’m on the road. I’ve got a son at the time who’s 15 years old, who doesn’t even have a driver’s license, who’s literally driving her to dialysis so she can get there. The guilt inside of me was insane. I kept wanting to leave this company because of them, and she wouldn’t let me do it,” Cole continued.
Michael Cole’s wife convinced him not to quit WWE
“She said, ‘You know, we got to support these kids. We got to support this family.’ And I tested my kids, all tested. None of us were exactly compatible to hit the 10 markers that you need for a transplant, and we were trying to figure out what do we do. We got put on the organ donor list, and that’s a five or six-year wait.
“My wife was literally withering away. You know, you can see in front of you, my kids are eating up over it. The kids are trying to enjoy high school at the time, you know, and they’re trying to live their life, and they’re not able to do that,” Cole said. [H/T F4WOnline]
While Cole’s wife was put on an organ donor list after he and his kids were not compatible to donate their kidneys, their ordeal came to an end after they found out that his brother-in-law was a perfect match for the transplant.
Michael Cole then revealed that October 1, 2026, will mark the 25th anniversary of his wife’s kidney transplant. He also reflected on WWE’s support at the time, saying both Vince and Shane McMahon reached out to him with heartfelt messages when he was balancing his job and his family’s medical crisis.
