10 Wrestling Bookers Who Damaged Their Own Promotions

When looking for a solid candidate to run a major wrestling promotion, is Pizza Hut regional manager the ideal CV entry?

It appears Herd's buddy, then-Turner executive Jack Petrik thought so. Taking the reins in 1989, wrestling's least popular Jim concocted a smorgasbord of inane ideas for WCW. From a hunchback tag team that'd be impossible to pin owing to their posture to Ric Flair as a gladiator, Herd had a... wild imagination.

In the case of Flair, the biggest star of the '80s outside of the WWF, driving him up the wall and trying to repackage him as Spartacus was a head-scratcher. The pair butted heads constantly, with Herd determined to replace the still immensely popular 'Nature Boy' with greener talents like Lex Luger and Sting. While both men were main event-calibre, neither was quite ready for the big push yet at the time.

Jim Herd's tiff with Jim Cornette (hardly the first person to have butted heads with Cornette in fairness) led to the dissolution of the legendary Midnight Express. His management issues also sent The Road Warriors, one of the most over tag teams there ever was, to the hills. There was also the case of Stan Hansen, a hard-hitting legend in Japan, leaving soon after arriving in protest of being repackaged as a comedy cowboy gimmick.

Herd's cartoony, comical approach to wrestling alienated both his roster and the viewers, many of whom longed for the traditional southern style of the NWA. It ultimately lead to Flair, still champion at the time, jumping ship to the WWF with his belt in tow. Beyond introducing pyrotechnics to wrestling, Herd's legacy is that of catastrophe. It took WCW years to bounce back from the dreadful start under his leadership.