10 Wrestlers Who Lost All Passion For The Business

7. Michelle McCool

Carlito WWE
WWE.com

This entry may scan as strange.

Michelle McCool makes an annual cameo appearance at the Royal Rumble as an ageless performer who still looks the part - so much so that you wonder why WWE hasn't yet coaxed her out of full retirement for a month-long programme ahead of a PLE.

In her actual prime, Michelle McCool enjoyed a more respectable career than most women's wrestlers in WWE before the marketing division thought it was a good idea to push them for the optics in the mid-2010s. She successfully reached a ceiling lower than the live crowd's interest in a Triple H match at WrestleMania: "She'd probably be really quite good, if WWE allowed her to actually go in matches that went longer than six minutes".

But that was never good enough.

Who could be satisfied with such a theoretical level of praise?

Certainly not McCool, who was once b*llocked backstage for working a match that was "too good" and threatened to overshadow the men; she told Lilian Garcia on an edition of Chasing Glory in 2019 that she retired because she didn't want to resent something that she "grew up loving so much".

By the end of her full-time career, she was left with "a sour taste".

 
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Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!