5 Real Reasons Why CAN'T MISS Wrestling Prospects Bombed

It's perhaps worth starting this entry with a note that we're not necessarily at the end of Parker Boudreaux's story.

The former WWE and AEW wrestler is currently working semi-regularly in Japan, is only in his mid-20s, and might yet turn a corner professionally that results in him hitting hitherto unseen heights in the industry. But all those caveats and qualifiers fly in the face of all the pre-emptive praise and positive reinforcement he was given by some of the sharpest eyes in industry history before he'd even taken a bump on television. 

Boudreaux looks a bit like a young Brock Lesnar if you squint a bit, but the comparison ends before the bell rings. Across small handful of matches he had for NXT and AEW he had between 2021 and 2023 (19 in total), very few instincts revealed themselves that would lead any rational viewer to consider him a next big thing, let alone anything close to the skill Lesnar had when he was given the nickname by WWE's marketing machine.

Paul Heyman vehemently disagreed. Back in 2021 and before he'd appeared in any capacity for either of the North American majors, Boudreaux posted on Twitter about his aspirations to make it to the top of the industry, and the man behind 'The Beast' jumped in to back it up. Using one of his famous on-screen catchphrases, Heyman said "His tweet is not a prediction. It’s a spoiler", and even dared users to save the tweet. Jim Ross agreed, attempting to tease him towards the other side of the divide, noting "Big money is earned, not awarded. Parker Boudreaux is great and has been in my radar for 2-3 years. You do know that there’s “big money” in AEW too."

Boudreaux wasn't shy in acknowledging it either, noting how integral Heyman was to him even entering the industry. As he put it in an interview with Sportskeeda WrestleBinge around the same time, "Paul Heyman was recruiting me at a young age – that to me was always such a huge blessing because not many people get the rub from Paul Heyman, especially at a young age like I did. For him to be not only a mentor, somebody that brought me into the business, showed me how to really work and to become one of those elite Paul Heyman guys, it’s an honor and it’s a privilege to be having a great relationship to this day with him."

All the right words from all the right people - Boudreaux included - but the actions never really reflected them. As Joe Gacy's heavy duty bodyguard Harland, he failed to elevate bad material and, removed from the bad gimmick, just continued to fail. Lacking the instincts to be trusted in singles matches and not quite scary enough to be a heater, he was let go just six months after he appeared on television, but took Jim Ross' words to heart and rocked up in All Elite Wrestling that summer. The company capitalised on his look more effectively by aligning him with Trench as part of Swerve Strickland's unnerving Mogul Affiliates group, but yet again a dispiriting lack of ability physicality was the grand undoing. Injury in 2023 kept him out for the better of a year before he parted ways with AEW in 2024. 

To Japan via Mexico, he continued to not really make waves, but power players still have Boudreaux's back. GLEAT President Hiroyuki Suzuki called him the "greatest fighter in the world", and International legend CIMA has taken him under his wing. Can the GLEAT Dojo do what no other wrestling school has yet managed and truly maximise his potential? Heyman, Ross, Suzuki and others will presumably be hoping so.