8 Wrestlers Who Saved Their WWE Careers (By Being Awesome At Something Else)
5. Jake Hager - Mixed Martial-Arts
Along similar lines, the former Jack Swagger genuinely did need to save his pro wrestling career.
Yet another WWE Superstar TM lumbered with lame, incongruous material—WWE took the Next Kurt Angle comparison much too far, exposing in the process Swagger’s complete lack of charisma and comedic timing—and he was stigmatised as a bust so badly that his athletic legitimacy and considerable skill hardly mattered. He was just another guy everybody thought might become a star who did not—a casualty of WWE’s pre-NXT lost generation.
After leaving WWE of his own will, Hager did nothing to alter that perception on his own terms because he wasn't motivated to do so. He found work, but his physique sagged, his performance level dipped, and he didn't strive to reinvent himself. His heart wasn't in it, and so he followed it to land in Bellator, in which he used his real hard-man pedigree to mount an undefeated streak against hardly worthy competition.
The Jake Hager act is a diet Brock Lesnar, but it works because as yet, there is no aspiration to have Hager conquer the competition. AEW is quietly building his aura as an effective brick sh*thouse henchman so as to not immediately draw the comparison.
"Complete lack of comedic timing"?
Stunningly, that is debatable now; under Chris Jericho's expert guidance, Hager has adopted a fabulous deadpan throughout various Inner Circle skits. There was always a pro wrestler lurking under that squandered shell; now, there might be a TV star, too.