10 AEW Wrestlers You Won’t Believe WWE Passed On

5. Jungle Boy

Being the son of TV icon Luke Perry, you would think WWE would snap up Jack ‘Jungle Boy’ Perry to a contract. They love publicity by association, after all, having previously signed David Otunga to a contract partially to be associated with megastar/his then-fiancée Jennifer Hudson.

But Jungle Boy’s 5’10 and 150-pound frame prevented WWE from taking him seriously, regardless of his unique look and a lifelong passion for the business (look as far back as SummerSlam 2009 and he’s shown with his Dad in the crowd). He spoke to The Young Bucks on their Wrestlers On The Road Ordering Room Service show about the tryout he had with WWE and how it didn’t go in his favour:

“I did some extra work. And they basically told me, they were like, ‘Look, if you put on 30 lbs or whatever, we will give you a job, but the way it is, it’s not going to happen.’ And I was just so bummed. I was like, ‘It bums me out that that’s the one thing that it gets hung up on because I know what I can do and I can do a bunch of stuff, but I think there are a bunch of guys who are way bigger than me who are not nearly as good and it’s silly to me to get so hung up on that.'”

Thankfully it worked out for Jungle Boy in All Elite Wrestling, where he has the freedom he never would have found in WWE with his Jurassic Express trio with Luchasaurus and Marko Stunt. He’s gone as far as speaking publicly on how AEW helped him cope with his father’s passing too, saying he could use the promotion as an outlet and focus all of his energy on bettering himself in the ring.