10 Wrestlers WWE Regret Releasing
2. Kenny Omega
It took him a long time to reach the top, but Kenny Omega is rightly regarded as one of the best wrestlers in the world at the moment. Nobody outside WWE has more buzz than Omega, and while he declined the opportunity to rejoin the company at the start of the year, there’s a decent chance he’ll do a U-turn when his NJPW contract expires in 2018, following in AJ Styles’ footsteps as a top-level WWE star.
Omega was only under WWE contract for a brief period of time, and left the company’s Deep South Wrestling developmental territory in 2006. He was highly critical of the standard of training he’d received during his run with the company, particularly from Bob Holly and Bill DeMott, leading to him eventually requesting his release, and rejoining the independent ranks.
There's no way WWE could have been expected to foresee Omega's meteoric rise, particularly in the last couple of years, and there's a strong chance he wouldn't have developed in the same way had he stayed in the company's rigid developmental system. In hindsight, however, WWE still let a future megastar slip through their fingers, whether they realised it at the time or not.