10 Wrestlers Who Got Smaller To Get Bigger

Bigger isn't always better.

Akira Tozawa Transform
Dragon Gate/WWE

No matter what your partner tells you, bigger is pretty much always better, and - beyond the bedroom - nowhere does this truism hold firmer than in the world of professional wrestling. It's a thoroughly well-established and tediously memified fact that Vince McMahon, one of the few 69-year-olds ever to appear shirtless on the cover of a muscle and fitness magazine, is an aficionado of hulking hunks, preferably perspiring ones.

Despite the best efforts of the entire industry to alter the paradigm, fate has continuously intervened to strengthen the WWE impresario's resolve. For various reasons ranging from the spiteful to the tragic, it seems certain McMahon utterly regrets pushing CM Punk, Daniel Bryan and Chris Benoit to the very apex of his company. That goes some way to explaining why its man mountains such as Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns and Drew McIntyre who today continue to dominate the upper echelons - even if they are infinitely more deserving than the meatheads of the past.

Jinder's Rule is well-known: if you want to be a star, you'd best be of cosmic proportions. But not in every case. They may be outliers to the norm, but a small handful of wrestlers managed to get much bigger only when they got much smaller.

10. Matt Hardy

Akira Tozawa Transform
WWE

It could be an optical illusion caused by his hulking pose, but there's little doubt the Matt Hardy you see on the left - a still taken from a losing effort against an evil Crush in 1994 - would have evolved into the wonderful breakout and latterly more wonderful broken future Hall of Famer Hardy we know today.

With that buzzcut, the chunky Version 0.5 looks like an East End hoolie on his first day in the firm, desperately preening for a scrap of recognition from Millwall Mick. He absolutely does not look the sort to squeeze himself into skin-tight tie-dye and pull off death-defying stunts from the tops of ladders. Four years on, that's exactly what he was doing; the heavyweight Hardy couldn't hang with Crush, but the cruiserweight one was able to leap a million miles ahead of him.

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Benjamin was born in 1987, and is still not dead. He variously enjoys classical music, old-school adventure games (they're not dead), and walks on the beach (albeit short - asthma, you know). He's currently trying to compile a comprehensive history of video game music, yet denies accusations that he purposefully targets niche audiences. He's often wrong about these things.