10 "Major" Wrestling Promotions That Never Got Off The Ground

If the current kerfluffle over TNA ownership has shown fans one thing, it's that wrestling promotion is not a glamorous business. While a few choice, established companies - like WWE, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre - are deeply entrenched enough in the wrestling sphere to consistently turn a profit, most leagues can't ever boast the same level of success.

In today's world - a world where the last wrestling boom is 15 years removed and where most companies have yet to figure out exactly how to use the Internet to their optimal advantage - nearly all wrestling companies lose money. It's a hard and cruel fact, but that doesn't make it any less true. Even TNA, which has existed for more than 14 years, spent almost its entire existence draining money from Panda Energy. With what the Carter family got out of it, they might as well have just flushed it all down the toilet.

Most new wrestling promotions fail right off the bat, and it never makes the news. Some of them, though, actually manage to get some buzz before their brief rise and immediate fall. Maybe they've got an interesting hook, or maybe fans are simply desperate (but, evidently, not desperate enough) - either way, over the years there have been several leagues that were earmarked for greatness that never materialized.

Here are 10 would-be major wrestling promotions that never got off the ground:

One of the more poorly defined entries on the list, World Wrestling Promotions never even got close to promoting a show. Nevertheless, for a couple of months in 2010, it was the talk of the wrestling world.

The league, according to the news of the time, was going to be owned and operated by Milton Wilpon of the Wilpon family - real-estate developers best known as the owners of the New York Mets. Their deep pockets would theoretically allow for the company to snatch up anyone it wanted, and sure enough, rumors linked just about every major star not under contract to WWE or TNA with the group, from Scott Steiner to Konnan to Vader. Even Chris Jericho, who was approaching another sabbatical from WWE, was said to be in talks with them.

Before things ever got off the ground, though, news began to spread that executives recruited for the company were departing. Within months, talk of the league was dead, and nobody really knew why. Some people blamed the financial woes the Wilpon family incurred at the hands of Ponzi scheme-swindler Bernie Madoff, but it was later determined that they suffered no such losses. Even weirder, there was never any confirmation that Milton Wilpon actually existed, leaving the whole thing seeming fishier than a cat's lunch.