10 Wrestlers Who Always Followed The Money
5. Brian Pillman
Brian Pillman wasn't your typical mercenary because he was fantastic and driven to be the best.
A great and exiting worker who introduced a mainstream audience to a breathless and futuristic new style, Pillman was always significantly better than his spot on the card, which was mandated by size bias in the 1990s. It didn't matter how much of a riot Pillman was, how excessively entertaining the Hollywood Blondes were at their hugely influential, sh*t-eating grin peak. Pillman wasn't massive, and in 1994, he wasn't Hulk Hogan.
Kim Wood, Brian's close friend, stole Pillman's Dark Side Of The Ring episode with his razor-sharp cutdowns of the industry. Wrestling fans tend not to like this, but Wood was too lethal with the deadpan not to fall in love with.
Talking about Pillman's innovative, elaborate ruse to depict himself as an unhinged character who had lost grasp of reality to become the wrestling talking point of 1996, Wood disagreed that he did it to "make it in the WWF", which, because that's where he indeed ended up after working Eric Bischoff into his WCW release, is cited as the reason behind his blurred lines character reinvention.
Pillman just wanted to get paid, as he should have, since his immensely creative and credible character work had warranted it. Said Wood:
"No. It's money. That's the bottom f*cking line, money! These people are in Fantasyland, and it's money."