10 WWE Wrestlers Who Came From Other Sports

Bad News Brown got into professional wrestling relatively late. The New Yorker was 34 when he fought his first match inside the squared circle, but by then he was no stranger to combat sport, having won bronze for the United States in the Men's Judo at the 1976 Olympic Games, and gold in the Pan American Games a year earlier.

Brown's WWE exploits didn't yield quite the same success - he left the company after a second spell in 1990 having failed to hold any of its title belts - but his time in wrestling was far from an outright failure. He fought high profile pay-per-view matches against the likes of Jake Roberts and Roddy Piper, and has gone down as one of the most respected legitimate fighters to make the jump to sports entertainment.