12 Times WWE Buried Itself

8. Wrestlers That LEAVE To Move Forward

Wrestling is rock hard.

It's a cool way to get rich and famous if you get rich and famous, but nobody that watches it and thinks "I want to do that!" should go in assuming that will actually be the end result. WWE is Sports Entertainment in every respect, including how rare it is to make it in either of those fields, and how damaging it can be to the body and mind despite being the envy of billions the world over.

Physical decline is a natural reality and risk of the job, independent of wherever a wrestler works. But what about the emotional and intellectual engines of the talents that ply their trade?

The rise in discussion of mental health over the past decade certainly redefined AJ Lee's time with the market leader. "Crazy" was once the shorthand used to describe anybody that didn't conform to every single neurotypical checkbox, and the label attached to her persona for the bulk of her time as a top star. She had a career that inspired future generations, wrote a book that encouraged others to open dialogues with themselves, and returned in a generation where she could speak freely on the challenges she faced what feels much more than a decade ago.

Conversation on such matters was presumably rife in the Mendez/Brooks household for all the years CM Punk was absent from the game following his enormously well-publicised acrimonious 2014 exit. Punk's recent on-screen rival Drew McIntyre had to physically and mentally rebuild when he got let go from the company that same year. Cody Rhodes spearheaded the formation of AEW alongside Tony Khan and The Elite, but his story was much the same beforehand. And on and on the list goes. 

There's nothing wrong with independent contractors going elsewhere to earn a living, but when so many do so because they need to, it speaks volumes about where they've been before.