10 Wrestlers Who Proved There's Life After WWE

Hogan didn't just thrive after leaving WWE in the early '90s - he nearly put his old employers out of business, after becoming the catalyst for wrestling's Monday Night Wars power shift, wherein WCW came close to toppling the McMahon empire.

And it wasn't simply a question of carrying on his old shtick on a different stage. Hogan did things in Atlanta that he had never done before, including turning heel for the first time and becoming the leader of an anti-establishment faction for one of the industry's biggest ever angles.

Granted, he achieved markedly less success after parting ways with WWE the second time, when he tried in vein to turn TNA into a legitimate wrestling force (and perhaps even less the third time, after he was outed as an alleged racist).