10 WWE Superstars Who Ended Up With Surprising Jobs After Wrestling

Finding work for the former workers, which wrestlers found the best shoot jobs?

Bret Hart
Live Nation

Wrestling is far from secure and doesn't promise the easiest second life, but plenty of the industry's biggest stars have found almost as much success away from the ring as inside of it. So much so, that their stories are at this point old news.

For an industry infamous for not having the best of exit strategies, think of the stories we have heard about. The Rock and Batista went to Hollywood, Kane and Jesse Ventura got into politics, Trish Stratus and DDP healed bodies and minds with yoga, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Chris Jericho have become fairly prolific podcasters and Hulk Hogan just missed out on scoring the naming rights to the George Foreman grill and disappeared out of the public eye completely never to be seen or heard from again.

Though the prospect of wrestlers being out in the wild with their bumping days behind them can seem like a terrifying one, the above lot all made their names all over again in other trades. And they're not the only ones, even if these next moves were perhaps a little lower profile...

10. AJ Lee - Writing And Advocacy

Bret Hart
WWE.com/Netflix

Former WWE Divas Champion and underrated stalwart of the pre-Women's Revolution era AJ Lee hasn't really looked back since leaving wrestling in 2015.

As well as setting up her own production company and writing a series of collaborative projects for the likes of DC Comics alongside actor Aimee Garcia, AJ Mendez Brooks has become an advocate for mental health awareness since publishing her hugely successful memoir "Crazy Is My Superpower".

As she put it to Fox Sports in 2017;

"Basically, I felt this book was the journey to discovering mental illness, and then saying, 'Oh, this okay, I can use this as a weapon, and it's actually a gift. It helps me see the world in different colors, and that's a good thing.' And the second book is, now what? How do you live with it every day?

Endless words of wisdom followed as the years passed, with Mendez Brooks becoming one of the more prominent figures from WWE's recent past to note the fundamental problems with how they stigmatise "crazy" in their storylines.

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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett