10 Superstars Who Had Better Careers Outside WWE

9. Drew Hankinson/Festus/Luke Gallows

Drew Hankinson€™s WWE career was filled with weird gimmicks and poor booking. First, he was the Imposter Kane in an attempted remake of the Undertaker-Underfaker era in 1994; needless to say, the supposed blow-off from this feud never happened. Then, he became Festus, who was some kind of slow dimwit who somehow became unstoppable at the sound of a ring bell. Though it seemed like a good idea, Magic-Ring-Bell Festus was just begging to be messed with, which eventually happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnzvUL33Hkk After that fiasco, he became Luke Gallows, who was CM Punk€™s first disciple in the Straight Edge Society. At that point, his career seemed to be going in the right direction, until he was released. After WWE, he went to TNA, where his career wasn€™t that much better. He became a member of Aces & Eights, competing under the name D.O.C. (Director of Chaos). However, like his WWE run, Hankinson€™s TNA run was lackluster and he didn€™t really accomplish much, other than being part of a massive group in Aces & Eights. But after that, he made his way to New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). There, he€™s had quite a bit of success, winning the 2013 World Tag League Tournament and the IWGP Tag Team Championship, both of which were with Karl Anderson (more on him later). Since then, he€™s successfully defended those titles against many strong teams, from the Briscoe Brothers, to Togi Makabe & Hiroshi Tanahashi, the latter being NJPW€™s top man. This makes a nice change from dressing up as Santa Claus on SmackDown. Even though Hankinson is now 30, he still has many years ahead of him, so hopefully he€™ll be able to gain more success in NJPW. But a return to WWE would be very unwise for him.