8 Wrestling Game-Changers Who Became JOBBERS!

In his prime, Marty Jannetty was a trailblazer.

That might understate it, in fact. As the more experienced half of The Rockers (and The Midnight Rockers before their WWE tenures) Jannetty retooled what it meant to be a babyface in peril in tag action. Aforementioned comparisons to the Rock & Roll Express were quickly swept aside thanks to Marty and Shawn Michaels ultimate outclassing them first as high flyers, then as all-rounders and eventually as heart-throb babyfaces. The pair were sensational at taking (and coming back from) a beating, but earned the adoration with periods of control coloured by totally futuristic, eye-popping offence.

Life came at Jannetty all too fast when The Rockers split, though. In and out of WWE thanks to a personal life too chaotic for even 1990s wrestling to cope with, his fleeting moments of brilliance were typically derailed by something that convinced promoters not to bother booking him. Unfortunately, this was the case in the summer of 1993, and just weeks removed from trading the Intercontinental Championship with Shawn Michaels in matches that ranked amongst the company's best all year, Jannetty was busted all the way down to the bottom rung when the company found a new xenophobic foreign menace to get behind. 

Borga won the match with a Torture Rack, and Jannetty couldn't have looked more tragic already before he was besieged by his own gear. Streamers covered his face so he couldn't fully emote, went in his eyes so he couldn't see, and fell into his mouth so he probably couldn't breathe all that well. He won at a tag title at last with The 1-2-3 Kid just months removed from this specific match, but the die had well and truly been cast on the former Intercontinental Champion. Those days - and days even adjacent to whatever those were - were over.