8 Wrestlers Who Turned Down Big Money WWE Deals

What's that you say? Bret Hart did, in fact, jump ship to WCW at the height of his fame in 1997, presumably picking up a bumper pay packet from Ted Turner in the process?

None of that is untrue, but wrestling historians will know that this only happened once Vince McMahon ushered his franchise player towards the exit door amid growing financial pressure. Originally, The Hitman was said to be more than happy to stick around, even if it meant snubbing a lucrative contact from the competition.

You can interpret this in a couple of different ways, the most charitable of them being that Bret turned down a move to WCW because he valued loyalty - he had been a WWE employee more than a decade - over financial reward.

But it's also possible that he simply didn't trust his ability to compete with what was, at the time, a far deeper and more star-studded roster. Up-and-comers like Stone Cold, The Rock and Triple H, after all, were far easier to nudge out of the limelight than Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Sting.