10 Wrestlers Who Went To War With Vince McMahon
4. Cody
Cody left WWE in 2016 in a bid to rehabilitate a career that, between a chaotic run of different personas in a company that otherwise stood so still for so long, was becoming the one throwback the retro-minded Cody didn't want.
A fitful and creative performer, WWE never did channel that effectively. Despite the odd and appreciated attempt at continuity, his career felt more comparable to that of Ed Leslie than the superstar babyface he knew he had it in him to get over as. And so he left, subverting entirely the idea of a jobbing ex-WWE actor getting paid handsomely to do his WWE schtick, as if it were a privilege. He lit up the Independents with a real humility, graft and ambition that ultimately, after joining the Bullet Club and threatening its sanctity in a phenomenally inspired storyline, led him to All In, the association with Tony Khan, and the creation of All Elite Wrestling.
Even if the upstart's promotional verbiage wasn't so charged in anti-WWE sentiment - the TNT press release promised less "scripted, soapy drama" amid so much incendiary rhetoric - Vince McMahon was always going to receive the formation of AEW as an act of war.
Who won?
Cody. Competition is here, it's real, and the rights fee is proof of it where so much of WWE's panic and fear was evidence.