10 AEW Wrestlers You Won’t Believe WWE Passed On

6. Britt Baker

Britt Baker had made a name for herself in AEW as one of the best female talents in all of pro wrestling. Her unsanctioned "Lights Out" match against Thunder Rosa on Dynamite was a classic where she undertook a huge amount of punishment on her body, and who can forget the sight of her bloodily smiling to the camera with a broken nose in her match with Hikaru Shida?

Britt tried out for WWE before AEW came to fruition, to potentially join her real-life partner Adam Cole in NXT. She went as far as being involved in a squash match with Nia Jax on Raw and being part of the second annual Mae Young Classic. But when undergoing an official tryout with WWE, her training to be a practising dentist outside of the ring actually stopped her from getting signed.

Britt commented on Talk is Jericho:

"I'll never forget at the very end of the camp, Canyon Ceman pulled me aside. If you're an independent wrestler, Canyon Ceman is the gatekeeper. He is, 'You shall not pass or come on in to the WWE.' And he told me, he was like, 'You really impressed a lot of people at this tryout.' I was like, so excited, so excited. But he said, 'As a father, I have a really hard time pulling someone from a professional degree for this business.' And my heart just sank. So a couple of weeks later I got an email from him saying, 'You have a lot of the qualities we look for, however we don't have an opportunity for you at this time, but if you have the passion to succeed in this, you'll find a way to make this work throughout dental school.' And I never forgot that. Didn't work out for WWE but it worked out to my advantage even better because I'm able to do both careers (in AEW). I'm a dentist and a professional wrestler on TV."

Although as we all know it didn’t stop Baker from accidentally cameoing on NXT TV (when the camera zoomed in on her concerned face at NXT Takeover: War Games after Adam Cole took that huge bump through the table from the top of the cage).