10 Wrestlers Who Became Everything They HATED

"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you". - Friedrich Nietzsche.

That famous quote from German scholar Nietzsche doesn't fit neatly like the last remaining piece of a jigsaw puzzle into every wrestler explored here, but it does give you the general gist of what's at hand. So many celebrated WWE stars (either current or alumni) have gone on to become what they once loathed. The "abyss" is/was staring right back at them, to be cute.

Being honest, their bank accounts might not give a toss about that. This isn't a glimpse into pro wrestling careers that were totally wrecked by poor decision making, but more a warning shot across the bows on what can go wrong if someone turns into something they once stood against. That can lead to a lot of personal misery, and it can even cripple self-confidence to the point that retirement is the only option. At least until it isn't!

Thankfully, every single one of the workers on this list is currently alive and kicking. They're either retired and doing their own thing, or they're still active in the biz at a high level. That's the positive part. The negative is that even the smallest tweaks can become disasters in companies like WWE.

All of these wrestlers morphed into things that'd turn their stomachs, make them retch, and make them tut-tut if it was happening to somebody else on the roster.

Jon Moxley didn't cut his teeth in the wrestling biz to hate what he was doing on TV every week or question how long the creative torture would last. He isn't the first to find out first hand that Vince McMahon's creative genius wasn't exactly exhaustive, but Mox is one of the highest profile examples from the final stretch of McMahon's WWE run.

The then-Dean Ambrose suffered through a thoroughly miserable time right before leaving the company for the brave new world over in AEW. Since, he's openly discussed how depressed he was when appearing in that inoculation skit, or when turning into a cartoonish Batman-style villain that was neither fleshed out nor particularly well thought out.

His style isn't for everybody (buckets of blood during random Rampage matches is hard to justify!), but Mox is the kind of wrestler who wants to have fun on his terms and express himself. WWE's rigid corporate ladder in 2018/2019 didn't allow for that, and so Deano darted off to see what was happening elsewhere on the wrestling map.

Becoming miserable at wrestling shows was never Moxley's wish, but that misery smacked him in the chest harder than a GUNTHER chop.