10 Wrestlers Who Got Smaller To Get Bigger

10. Matt Hardy

It could be an optical illusion caused by his hulking pose, but there's little doubt the Matt Hardy you see on the left - a still taken from a losing effort against an evil Crush in 1994 - would have evolved into the wonderful breakout and latterly more wonderful broken future Hall of Famer Hardy we know today.

With that buzzcut, the chunky Version 0.5 looks like an East End hoolie on his first day in the firm, desperately preening for a scrap of recognition from Millwall Mick. He absolutely does not look the sort to squeeze himself into skin-tight tie-dye and pull off death-defying stunts from the tops of ladders. Four years on, that's exactly what he was doing; the heavyweight Hardy couldn't hang with Crush, but the cruiserweight one was able to leap a million miles ahead of him.