8 Wrestling Careers Ruined By Jumping To The Other Side

6. Raven - From ECW To WCW (1997)

Most will remember Raven from the glory days of ECW, his stint on WCW or WWF programming, or possibly his initial debuts as Johnny Polo or Scotty Flamingo. Raven always had a lot raw talent and potential as a manager, as a producer and as a wrestler. Like many performers in the mid 90's, he found his way thanks to the genius of Paul Heyman in the early days of Extreme Championship Wrestling, who helped him develop a cutting-edge gimmick in the form of the sadistic, nihilistic and masochistic poetry-quoting badass known simply as Raven, which is a reference to the works of Edgar Allen Poe. WCW and the WWF had a habit of stealing ECW's top talents away from them, with the allure of much larger salaries and stable contracts, a temptation which Raven couldn't refuse as he signed with WCW for the second time in '97. What World Championship Wrestling initially had in mind for Raven was similar to what he did in ECW. Much like Raven's Nest in ECW, he lead a stable known as The Flock, a band of punks who followed Raven's every whim and were devoted to helping him succeed. Ironically, Raven's attachment to the stable held him back from single competition, as most of the time he was feuding with members of his own flock. What also held him back was the fact his keyfabe contract said he didn't have to wrestle if he didn't want to, so most of the time he just sat in the front row with his band of juvenile delinquents. This isn't to say Raven's career was crippled or buried by WCW, but he spent all of two years doing nothing, besides the occasional mid-card title match or tag-team title match. Considering the momentum he had in ECW, by the time he left WCW, he wasn't such a big thing. Raven could have been so much more, if only the ball had kept rolling.