10 Wrestling Bookers Who Made Themselves World Champion
If you have the pencil, you might as well have the gold.
One of the many qualities that makes pro wrestling a unique industry in the entertainment sphere is the blurred line between what happens behind the camera and what happens in front. For decades, owners of wrestling companies have positioned themselves as on-screen antagonists or protagonists, and (for far longer) grapplers running their own promotions have booked themselves to be main attractions.
Those developments aren't always bad - when Vince McMahon made himself the hottest heel in WWE history in the late 1990s, not only had he booked a feud that saved his company, but he had also created a star that he knew would never jump ship to a rival organization.
Likewise, many wrestlers-turned-indy promoters - Combat Zone Wrestling's John Zandig, for instance - know that by giving themselves their group's top title, they don't have to worry about a champion abandoning the organization for a better payday.
The other side of the coin shows itself when bookers' self-interest is detrimental to the health of the promotion for which they compete. These men, seeking to line their own pockets or stroke their egos rather than bring success to their organization as a whole, have ended up damaging their legacies and even crippling the wrestling business itself.