9. Brian Pillman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1aK70mu6Q Many American wrestlers have a background in American football, playing the game at either high school or college before turning to wrestling when they are unable to quite make the grade. Brian Pillman was one such wrestler, being cut from the squads of the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills in pre-season before playing in the Canadian Football League for the Calgary Stampeders. It was in Calgary where Pillman would cross paths with the Hart family, training in the infamous Hart Dungeon before performing in WCW and ECW over a seven year period, forming a tag team with a young Steve Austin called the Hollywood Blonds at one point. Towards the end of his WCW stint, he began to develop a 'loose cannon' gimmick, which saw him take part in a number of worked shoots. One such shoot saw his employment 'terminated' as part of a storyline, though to maintain the illusion of realism, real legal documents were produced, which Pillman used to jump ship to the WWE in 1996. There, he would feud with his former tag partner Austin, most notably in an infamous segment that saw him point a gun at Stone Cold's head. Two months after this, he was not a part of the 1997 Rumble match, but did become part of the New Hart Foundation following Wrestlemania, allying with Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart and the British Bulldog. He would die from a undetected heart condition at the age of 35 a short while later, however, two months before the next Rumble match that he could've been a part of.