8 WWE Busts Who Revived Their Careers
For when the WWE get-backs are WAY better than the setbacks
Time moves slower now than at any point in North American wrestling history.
Three decades into the weekly churn brought about by the advent of Monday Nitro in September 1995, nobody could have predicted how long - and sometimes laboured - tenures in major organisations would ultimately be the outcome of two companies getting themselves worked into a frenzy by a ratings war and an arms race for talent.
It's not like the late-90s themselves moved glacially. The total opposite was true, but the aftermath left behind a 18-year monopoly, a challenger brand forced into broadly adopting tried and true television formulas, and a star-versus-star mentality that saw to wrestlers moving up and down the card rather than up and out. Stone Cold Steve Austin walked out of WWE in 2002 before his body put the blockers on for good in 2003, and both those situations are in shorter supply in the present day - the bad news is that wretched creative is something to be patiently suffered through while waiting for a light at the end of the tunnel, but the good news is that improved working conditions and a better understanding of mental and physical wellbeing means careers last substantially longer than the brutal old days.
Once upon a time, relatively young wrestlers found themselves with a mind that was willing and a body that was weak. Now, both are good to go, but a third trait - patience - is just as crucial.
Such as...
8. Naomi
Naomi's "...with caution" patter might scan as fairly one-note, but it has at very least gotten her over as one of the biggest stars of 2025 following a shocking heel turn on Jade Cargill the prior summer. It also shouldn't come as much of a surprise that she's been able to get it as over as she has considering some of the other turds she was forced to polish in her prior run with the company leading up to a 2022 walkout.
Her 2018 runs with the SmackDown Women's Championship were increasingly looking like career highs by 2020 when she was trapped risible feud with Mandy Rose over husband Jimmy Uso's affections and forced into a health-related sabbatical for the rest of 2019. A monster return pop at the Royal Rumble wasn't remotely followed up on, and a series of defeats before and during the early stages of the pandemic bottomed out with a Lacey Evans rivalry that - amongst other things - saw them brawl following an excruciatingly bad karaoke showdown segment in the summer.
Lost at sea creatively, a team with Sasha Banks in 2022 was the best of a bad situation for both, and they knew as much when they boldly walked out in protest of terrible booking, leaving the tag title belts behind them as they went. The pair to circuitous routes to greater heights, and while Banks rebadged herself as Mercedes Moné and found tremendous success in NJPW, the indies and especially AEW, Naomi's sojourn to TNA before returning to WWE at the 2024 Royal Rumble seemingly revived her self-belief.
Driving the collapse of The Big Three with her attack on Jade Cargill (and months-long denial to Bianca Belair), Naomi successfully cashed in her Money In The Bank contract to become Women's World Champion, having also battled Cargill in tentpole outings at WrestleMania and Evolution. The storylines have been some of the most cared-for in the company, with the former Funkadactyl using 2025 as a proof-of-concept year for herself as the division's premiere heel and/or standout talent. .