10 WCW Stars Who Were Fired For Unprofessional Conduct

When Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura arrived in WCW from the WWF in January 1992, he was a pretty major star in the industry. He’d been in movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger – good ones – and had innovated the role of the heel colour commentator while announcing at the WWF, before leaving eighteen months before after standing up for himself over McMahon using his image rights without consent or compensation.

Two years and some change later, Eric Bischoff and Ric Flair persuaded Hulk Hogan – at that time, the biggest star the industry had ever seen – to join WCW. Hogan’s price tag was astronomical, and his demands for creative control and his spot on the card were ridiculous. Bischoff and Turner Broadcasting agreed to them all, so desperate were they for the shot in the arm that Hogan represented.

One WCW mainstay who definitely didn’t welcome Hogan’s arrival was Jesse Ventura. A decade earlier, Ventura had made noises around the WWF locker room about the benefits for all of the talent in forming some kind of union, and Hogan had ratted him out to the McMahon’s, effectively quashing the newborn labour rights movement before it got its legs under it. Ventura had ended his close friendship with Hogan over the matter, so he wasn’t thrilled when he found that the man was poised to become the alpha male on his new turf.

The way Eric Bischoff describes it in his book, Controversy Creates Cash, Ventura was jealous: constantly moaning about Hogan, upset that he wasn’t the biggest fish in the pond anymore. He mentions that there was history between the two, but isn’t interested in getting into it, citing a moment at a taping where Ventura was discovered asleep instead of working as the final straw where he decided not to use him any longer. Ventura vehemently denies ever falling asleep on the job, but it certainly seems likely that he might have been stirring things up behind the scenes.

Clearly in a showdown between Hogan and Ventura in WCW in 1994, Ventura would be the one sent home. Hogan was the company’s great white hope, the wrestling legend Bischoff was pinning their fortunes on… Ventura was just a colour commentator. Whatever the specifics, Ventura sat out the rest of his contract at home, paid in full but never asked to come back in to television again.