10 Wrestlers Who Left And Returned More Badass
Painful embarrassment to Pain-making genius.
Evolution is imperative in professional wrestling. If only WWE recognised this, and ran back one of its most special-feeling WWE pay-per-views ever, and not another Saudi Arabia show (!) during friggin' WrestleMania season (!).
The quickest and most decisive way to kill one's career is by simply existing for too long in the same space as the same character, and it's no wonder the New Daniel Bryan took on "Fickle!" as an insult. Wrestling fans are fickle, and your writer includes himself among that number. Genuinely arduous, admirable in-ring effort suddenly becomes a nuisance.
You've already taken the equivalent of a 30mph car crash in the same gear, guy, get with the f*cking programme, God.
It's so disrespectful, in fact, that a man's entire career is defined by this perceived inability to change in too many circles. The 1-2-3 Kid changed the very in-ring complexion of the WWF, and North American pro wrestling at large, but he didn't change out of his gear for a year or stop saying "Suck it!", so f*ck him. Some evolve to adopt new gear, or a new theme, or by using an IRL skill to inform a new persona. Others simply become very, very good at pounding dicks into the dirt.
Consider this a non-WWE sequel to 10 WWE Stars Who Left And Returned More Badass...
10. Chris Jericho
The Tokyo Dome is known informally as the 'Egg Dome', on account of its unique shape, and Chris Jericho lived up to that by laying one there in 1997.
As the dark doppelgänger of Jushin 'Thunder' Liger, the supposed mirror image 'Super Liger' was in fact the opposite: uncoordinated, botch-plagued, and silly. His performance was so shoddy that Liger never even clapped at its awfulness. Plans for the feud were aborted.
Jericho wasn't rattled; he continued to ascend to superstardom as an endlessly creative and entertaining character in WCW, which alerted the WWF to his wasted potential as a star act. Ultimately, it was realised; after a lukewarm start, Jericho mastered the epic rhythms of the in-house WWF style, which he infused with his own spectacular flourishes. Jericho's style was always hard to place because he was so adaptable and skilled.
Upon his return to the site of his career low, he reinvented himself 21 years later to become a deadly jackass in a superb war opposite Kenny Omega. The Painmaker focused on the brutal, brawling aspect of his act in a bid to both preserve his body and differentiate himself. In matches with Tetsuya Naito particularly, Jericho unleashed a hard-hitting. no-f*cks legit badass element to a game powered by his legendary aura.
Jericho was always a shoot badass, or at least totally fearless in the face of other hard men, which made this latest evolution so easy, and so awesome, to take in.