8 Wrestlers You Forgot Still Work For WWE In 2019
Not gone, but forgotten.
From the last head count, WWE have approximately 5000 active wrestlers on their various rosters, a veritable army of foot soldiers equipped to take on the apparently impending wrestling war scheduled for this autumn.
With such a mass of bone-bending humanity spread across a dizzying five different brands - a number which required all the fingers of one hand to get right - it's pretty much guaranteed a whole clutch of them are going to get lost in the shuffle. Think WCW in 1998, on a somehow even grander and more wasteful scale.
But for the most part, the problem is talent being overlooked, not outright forgotten. Everyone and their cat is acutely and painfully aware that Chad Gable, for example, is being criminally underutilised by the company. From WWE's point of view, he's an irritating fixture in the wrestling world's collective noggin - one they'd like to give a swift whack.
If only he could be more like the very select group of unfortunate wayward souls who are so far down the pecking order that even the company themselves have probably forgotten they are on the payroll. It worked for Lanny Poffo.
8. Lio Rush
If you've forgotten Lio Rush was once Bobby Lashley's annoying albeit athletic pitch man, it's because WWE want you to.
The 'Man of the Hour' has seemingly been lost to time, entirely absent on WWE television since WrestleMania 35. Apparently, Rush caused quite the commotion backstage by repeatedly refusing to obey time-honoured - and arguably antiquated - traditions with regards to locker-room veterans. It's not a smart move to p*ss off guys with so much creative clout, and as such, the irascible Rush has found himself not so much frozen out but figuratively melted into nothing.
Apparently, Rush is now the company's Fight Club: nobody talks about Rush. Although WWE haven't gone quite as far as removing Lio's Superstar Bio - the final sign that things are through - it seems only a matter of time at this point - especially as Rush himself has largely dissociated himself from his employers on social media.