9 Promos That Killed Wrestlers' Careers

There are a few main ways to lose your job in the wrestling business. Injuries, behind-the-scenes scandals, and shoddy in-ring works are all common ways to see your contract terminated, but sometimes all it takes to end a career is one bad promo.

We all know that a great promo can kickstart a career and transform a mid-carder into a household name. But not everyone in the industry is lucky enough -- or, more accurately, talented enough -- to have their own Austin 3:16 moment. They don't get their own Hulkamania train to leave the station. Instead, they find themselves sputtering out something about "the right gay guy" at "the wrong time" and making Vince McMahon's head explode.

And while there are plenty of bad promos out there, it takes a special kind of promo to end someone's career. Sometimes a person stumbles through their words so terribly that they're never allowed another chance on the mic. And sometimes it's the guy on the receiving end of a verbal burial that gets the axe.

Behold the promos that had effects so dire they effectively killed off entire careers.

Gangrel seemed to be in the perfect position during the Attitude Era. He was the leader of a hot young stable that was playing off the popularity of "nu-Vampire" movies like Blade, and his silent (you might say brooding) gimmick allowed him to get extremely over with the fans without having to do anything besides look vaguely menacing and perform competently in the ring.

And then they had him speak. Oh how they wish they could turn back time on that decision.

After a brief feud with The Ministry of Darkness, Gangrel and his compatriots were absorbed by The Undertaker's faction, and became the group's whipping boys, constantly proving their loyalty by enduring beatings and actual floggings. It was brutal stuff. When The Brood then split from The Ministry -- after The Undertaker tried forcing Edge and Gangrel to sacrifice Christian, no less -- the stage was set for an intense and dramatic promo.

Instead, we got the immediate vaporization of their mystique. While reciting lines in a stilted, nasally timbre, Gangrel sounds less like a Lost Boy than he did a Goonie-in-training, and his "evil laugh" is as embarrassing as they come.

Subsequently, Gangrel was basically banned from the mic, Edge and Christian were pulled away from him -- though briefly replaced with Matt and Jeff Hardy -- and the vampire enthusiast never regained his initial popularity.