10 Times TNA Succeeded Where WWE Failed
3. EC3
When Mike Hutter first appeared on WWE TV as Derrick Bateman, he was a young wrestler with a good look and seemingly a bright future ahead of him. Appearing on Season 4 and later Season 5 of the original NXT format, he regularly featured on the show and was beginning to become a fixture of the developing WWE brand.
Sadly for Bateman, his career with WWE wouldn’t last and he would be gone by mid-2013. However, within months, Bateman made his debut in TNA as Dixie Carter’s spoiled nephew, Ethan Carter III. With that, EC3 was born.
EC3 made an immediate impact in Impact Wrestling, debuting at Bound For Glory and defeating a number of jobbers in the weeks that followed, establishing himself as a hated heel. Over the next year, Carter began to make a name for himself as a genuine talent in TNA, facing the likes of Eric Young, Samoa Joe, and Bully Ray.
Carter eventually graduated to headliner and defeated Kurt Angle for his first World Heavyweight Championship in June 2015. Carter has since become a two-time World Champion and is now a staple of the TNA/GFW roster, considered by many as a homegrown talent of TNA Wrestling.