7 Wrestlers Who Were ELITE Everywhere Except WWE
Other promotions were kind to these top tier workers. WWE? Not so much.
For over 3 decades, WWE's vast hype machine led fans to believe that Raw, SmackDown and NXT were the only wrestling promotions in existence. To audience members of a certain vintage, it still gives us heart palpitations or makes us do a double-take when hearing Michael Cole say the words, "New Japan Pro Wrestling". As funny as this is, certain superstars had glittering careers in the wider world of wrestling that were used abysmally in WWE.
In some of the more extreme cases, it hurt the legacies of a few who'd rank amongst the greatest performers to ever grace the business. WWE's mishandling of the other, more impenetrable careers only serves as a weird glitch in the matrix of their otherwise incredible bodies of work.
There are plenty of great wrestlers who entered the world of sports entertainment that were either booked terribly because of their history as enemies of Vince McMahon's empire, or they simply didn't fit the frame of WWE's specific in-house style. These upcoming wrestlers all had sensational runs across different eras and promotions around the world, but simply didn't reach their full potential whilst employed by the world's biggest wrestling company.
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7. Sting
Sting is one of the most unanimously popular performers in pro wrestling history, be it amongst his contemporaries and peers, 'Little Stingers' or 'Old Stingers'. 'The Icon' is a fitting nickname for a man who is incredible on the mic, can put on every type of match at the highest standard, and was great across 3 different generations.
He made his name in WCW and was part of one of that company's best storylines in the 'Monday Night Wars' when he portrayed the melancholic 'Crow' character to wage a year-long war on the nWo. Eventually, it was almost part of his personality that he'd never wrestle for Vince McMahon - Sting went to TNA instead of joining the WWE's invasion angle.
So, when he arrived at Survivor Series 2014 to confront Triple H and give him the Scorpion Death Drop inside a WWE ring, it was one of the most surreal moments ever for fans who grew up in the 90s.
Stinger's WWE run was one of the only lacklustre parts of his entire career, and his WrestleMania 31 match with Hunter was a shambles. Sting lost his only match at 'Mania, and his only singles win for the company came via a DQ win over Big Show. When you consider the phenomenal, undefeated run he had in AEW with Darby Allin, diving from balconies at an age where he could get a free bus pass and having one of the best send-offs in the history of the business, Sting's WWE run feels like yet another example of the company using a WCW legend to remind everybody that WWE won the aforementioned 'Monday Night Wars' (again!).