10 Wrestlers Who Totally Wasted Their Own Potential
2. Marty Jannetty
That his name has become a pro-wrestling pejorative does Marty Jannetty a great disservice.
Much like Sean Waltman, Marty was a performer far above any reductive take on his legacy. To call someone the Marty Jannetty of their team shouldn't be an insult, but praise, because Jannetty was f*cking awesome. Sure, he was never going to have the same kind of singles career as Shawn Michaels, but who was? That guy was a special, once-in-a-generation talent. Being slightly worse than one of the era's greatest wrestlers shouldn't be an indictment.
An excellent wrestler in his own right, that Jannetty experienced little success post-Rockers is entirely down to his own behaviour. The man was too self-destructive to succeed.
In 1992 he earned six months of house arrest and his WWE release after assaulting a police officer. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Though Jannetty was offered many opportunities to right his course and fix his career, the former Rocker couldn't keep himself on the straight and narrow, with drugs, alcohol, and other behavioural issues proving constant sources of derailment.