Well, blooming heck. Some stuff happened at All Out, did it not? Not only did the ghost of Tony Hawk past fight the ghost of Tony Hawk future, not only did the lovechild of Space Jam and Def Jam fight Bulgaria’s meatiest flag but there were three capital huge HUGE debuts.
Ruby Soho won the casino women’s battle royal which is a truly lovely thing to have happened after her WWE release earlier this year, but it’s the twin debuts of Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson that really made it seem like a seismic shift has occurred in the professional wrestling scene, a dual pair of proper legitimate defections.
WWE tried their hardest to keep both men, but while Ruby was pushed, both Cole and Danielson JUMPED, Adam to finally reunite with his one true love, and also Britt Baker, and Bryan to begin his global tour of kicking all the best wrestlers in the world in the head.
But it got us to thinking, as BIG NEWS normally does, what are the other most shocking defections to have occurred in the wrestling biz, when wrestlers have taken their ball and instead of going home, have gone to play for the other team.
I’m Adam hailing from partsFUNknown and here are the 10 Most Shocking Defections in Wrestling History.
10. Brian Pillman (WCW to ECW to WWF)
We’re starting with what might be my favorite story on the list, because it’s a goddamn heist movie. Flying Brian Pillman, a cavalier poodle with a gun, properly hoodwinked his way from one company to another.
In WCW in the mid-90s Pillman was developing a character that was years ahead of its time, a proto-CM Punk who’d tear down the fourth wall with a series of demented worked shoots, creating a bizarre continuity (or should we say a loose canon) where no one knew if he was a gimmick or if he’d legitimate become unhinged, even people WITHIN WCW.
He’d physically accost Bobby Heenan at ringside without warning him, call the WCW booker Kevin Sullivan ‘bookerman’ during a match and walk out, before appearing to get fired.
The whole thing was a scheme cooked up between Bischoff and Pillman for Brian to travel the prominent indies like ECW and stir up a hornet’s nest of controversy before returning to WCW.
To make it look real, the release papers Bischoff gave him were real, and Pillman used that legal freedom to have a short stint in ECW before almost immediately double-crossing Eric and signing with WWF.
Hustle, disloyalty, disrespect.
9. Mike Awesome (ECW to WCW)
ECW One Night Stand 2005 is a heck of a show, famous for a number of things that we’re not going to mention, because you know why.
However, something we’ve talked a little less about on the card is an eye-watering match between iconic rivals Masato Tanaka and Mike Awesome, which is like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, but with chairshots instead of birds.
One of the fascinating things about the match though is Joey Styles’ commentary where he repeatedly and ruthlessly buries Mike Awesome, so much so that you think ‘does Joey really hate Mike?’.
Yes he did, stemming back to a famous defection in the late 90s.
Mike Awesome was ECW Champion in April 2000 when, after refusing to sign a new deal with ECW over unpaid wages (which was the style at the time), he zipped over to WCW and appeared on Nitro to beat up Kevin Nash whilst wearing a bum bag (which was the style at the time) with commentary screaming ‘that’s the ECW heavyweight champion’.
The ECW belt had to be gotten off Awesome, and it happened in SUCH a wonderfully forbidden door-shattering way.
Awesome dropped the belt to Tazz at an ECW show, which was crazy because it was a WCW guy, dropping the ECW belt to Tazz, who was currently signed… with WWF. It was the style at the time.
8. Lex Luger (WWF to WCW)
The Monday Night Wars saw a whole host of insane, industry-boggling, etiquette murdering defections, some of which we’ll get to in other entries, don’t you worry.
Rick Rude appeared on Nitro while his last appearance on a pre-taped Raw was airing, making him the first person to appear on Nitro and Raw at the same time, wrap your heads around that wrestling fans.
Jeff Jarrett’s acrimonious departure from the big dub is infamous, but we have to talk about the defection that kicked off the war. The opening shot. The first episode of Nitro aired on September 4, 1995.
The night before, on September 3, Lex Luger wrestled a WWF house show in Canada then, because he was out of contract with Vince’s company at the time, hopped on a flight to Minnesota to appear on the premiere episode of Nitro, and he did it, WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE AT WWF.
That is bold, and as blindsiding a betrayal as you can get. As someone who has literally been watching a wrestling show, only to see his promotion’s current top champion make an appearance in the crowd to find out THEN AND THERE that he’s signed elsewhere, it is a heck of a feeling, and one of the few things me and Vince share, other than a birthday, and a distaste for Shane McMahon.
7. Madusa (WWF to WCW)
1995 was a year for WWF, it really was.
House show attendance was in the toilet, the roster was thinner than one of those stupid weird gel mints you put on your tongue, and Nitro kept rummaging through their allotment at night and making off with all their stars.
And because my dad Eric Bischoff is a messy bitch that loves drama, all these new signings were instructed not only to jump ship, but stick the knife in and give it a little twist.
Case in point, the woman known as Alundra Blayze in WWF, crossed over to WCW to retake her original identity of Madusa.
Only issue was, she’d been let go from WWF whilst still being in possession of the WWF Women’s Championship belt, and when she told Eric of this, he clapped his hands together like he’d just been told it’s double pudding Friday.
Medusa was told to bring the belt to WCW, appear on Nitro with it, and drop it in a trash can live on TV, where it would sit until she’d become Alundra Blayze again and fish it out at the WWE Hall of Fame.
Oh, the silly wrestling companies and their silly games.
6. Brock Lesnar (WWE to NFL)
Tell you what’s nice. When your main event scene is packed with full-time proven draws. A.K.A. WWE from 1998 to 2001 inclusive.
However, as the attitude era drew to a close, The Rock had one foot out the door, Austin had chronic neck, Foley had retired, Undertaker had been one bad bump from retirement for the last few years, Triple H’s legs had exploded, in late 2001, Vince had the sobering realization he had to make a new star fast.
Cue the originator of the Brock Lesnar push, Brock Lesnar.
Debuting the night after WrestleMania X8 and WWE Champ by Summerslam, WWE were super duper serious about making Brock Lesnar the new face of the company.
Brock got over, and everything was going to be fine with the company as long as the new face doesn’t get farmboy cross about having to travel around in those fancy planes, trains and automobiles all the time and run away to throw balls instead of men.
Sadly that’s exactly what happened, and right after WWE invested literal years in making Lesnar the most important man in the company, he split for the NFL, leaving WWE, and its fans at WrestleMania XX, really peeved.
5. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW to NOAH)
Time for a Japanese wrestling story, somewhere out there Tempest’s little ears are picking up and his little tail is starting to wag.
There are a number of BIG wrestling companies in Japan, New Japan, Stardom, but for about 20 years in the 70s and 80s, the biggest was All Japan Pro Wrestling, founded by wrestling’s other most famous giant, Giant Baba.
However, being the biggest player in town the company was plagued by defections and, oh man, when people quit All Japan, they did it in style.
The company has like three different mass exoduses of talent in its history, in each case an entirely new promotion being formed to house all the talent that ran away.
In 1990 Super World of Sport was formed by All Japan breakaways, ditto in 2013 when Wrestle-1 was formed by Keiji Mutoh after a mass talent resignation, but the most famous case is the formation of Pro Wrestling NOAH.
In 1999, Giant Baba died and the ownership of the company passed to his widow.
Dismayed at the proposed direction for the company, Mitsuharu Misawa, one of the four major names in All Japan history, resigned to form a new promotion Pro Wrestling NOAH, taking with him all but two of its top native talent, a bunch of big name gaijins, and it’s goddamn TV slot as well.
Total scorched earth policy, although the promotion’s called NOAH, so I guess, total wet earth policy.
4. Ric Flair (WCW to WWE)
The Natural Boy, the dirtiest player in the game, and the man who’s fuelled by divorce like most cars are fuelled by petrol, was synonymous with two major companies throughout two of biggest decades in wrestling history, the NWA, and then WCW.
Like Cody in AEW, Hogan in WWE and Inoki in New Japan he was The Guy in the companies, which made it all very weird when WCW fired their biggest star and he hopped over to their biggest competitor for a cup of coffee.
See the running of the company had been taken over by Jim Herd. Jim Herd fundamentally misunderstood what WCW fans wanted. The fans wanted Ric Flair because he was Ric Flair.
Jim Herd wanted Ric Flair to shave his head and be renamed Spartacus and not pay him as much because Jim Herd eats crayons.
Flair refused, got canned, and like Madusa, they omitted one small thing, they forgot to get the WCW Heavyweight Championship off him before he left, so, in an act that would cause Twitter to herniate today, he took it to F**KING WWF WITH HIM.
WCW sued WWF so they eventually had to use a pixelated tag championship instead of the big gold belt, but still, absolute scenes.
3. Chris Jericho (WWE to AEW)
AEW is a company that is built on defection. Exodus is built into its very bone marrow.
The Elite defecting from New Japan, Jon Moxley turning new WWE contracts down, seeming WWE lifers like Paul Wight and Mark Henry popping in to pop Vince’s blood pressure.
But at the very heart of it, is one key defection, from a man who has a habit of it, Chris Jericho.
Sure Cody Rhodes too, but Jericho was the bigger name, Jericho was the first champion, Jericho was the first ballot hall of famer, whose day one allegiance with this brand new whippersnapper of a company helped to draw those crucial frustrated WWE fans looking for an actual alternative.
And it’s not even Jericho’s first rodeo, sure his New Japan excursion was officially sanctioned, at first, but he made his bones in the big dub by making a big deal of escaping WCW in its prolonged death throes.
Him bolting from the company and immediately being treated like a big deal, debuting in a segment with The Rock, getting to keep his WCW name, led to other such defections like the Radicalz, helping to give WWF the best midcard in wrestling history.
Also, just a little fun fact to end this entry, while in contract negotiations with WWE in 2007, Jericho teased jumping ship to TNA by posted a picture of their logo to his website, the man knows how to play the field.
2. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash (WWF to WCW)
Wrestling’s most lucrative boom period was the late nineties. That boom period was kicked off by WCW somehow going from Dungeon of Doom bullshit, to suddenly very cool indeed overnight.
WCW became very cool overnight, when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash airquotes “invaded” WCW from the WWF wink wink.
Hall and Nash saw the chance for better money and fewer days and jumped ship, but unlike those that jumped before them, they jumped with the gimmick of being WWF guys, working on behalf of WWF, to bring down WCW.
“You know who I am” said Scott Hall, not explicitly calling himself Razor Ramon but still doing the accent. The fans did know, and the fans flipped for it.
It seems incredibly hokey now, but after the ludicrous real-life antics of Lex Luger, it was paper over with this tangible reality that made it instantly the biggest storyline of the year, especially after the lawsuits started flying around, that’s the mark that you’ve truly defected and are not currently being wished well in your future endeavors.
The final cherry on the NWO cake came a short while later, courtesy of…
1. Hulk Hogan (AWA to WWF to WCW)
Single-handedly, wrestling’s most effective turncoat. Apart from the TNA thing, but we don’t need to talk about the TNA thing.
Way back in the early 80s, Hulk Hogan was being tipped for very big things in the AWA, before Vince made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Hulk left to become the biggest guy in professional wrestling, leaving Verne Gagne’s AWA with such crushed hopes and dreams that the rumor persists to this day that Gagne tried to bribe Iron Sheik to break Hogan’s leg in the match at MSG intended to crown him WWF Champ.
Hogan pledging his considerable star power to big Vince was instrumental in setting apart the Fed as the industry leader, but then, when bloom came off the rose in the early 90s, Hogan skipped out to try and make movies.
Those were a lump of arse, so he returned to wrestling… for WCW, WWF’s competitor.
He jumped from the AWA, ushered in a boom period, then jumped to WCW, and eventually ushered in a second boom period with the NWO.
All your favorite wrestling memories as a kid, chances are most of them are down to Hulk Hogan having the brand loyalty of a capitalist mayfly.
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