10 Wrestlers Who Were Terrible In One Company But Great In Another

A wrestler may be great, but that doesn’t always come across on TV. Everyone needs to fulfill a role, and sometimes the role in one promotion just isn’t right. Maybe the front office doesn’t believe in a performer’s potential star power, or maybe a wrestler is too inexperienced at the time and ends up becoming a star later. And sometimes a dude just isn’t the right fit for a given company.

With that in mind, here are ten wrestlers who largely failed in one company, but moved on and made huge impacts in other promotions, featuring talent from WWE, NXT, TNA, and even NJPW – a lesson that a good wrestler can fail in any promotion.

10 Mil Muertes

Ricky Banderas had already been on Wrestling Society X and was working in Puerto Rico and Mexico when he signed to TNA in 2007. There, he was Judas Mesias, the onscreen brother of Abyss, making him the Kane to a guy who already kind of resembled Kane.

Banderas' time at TNA was short-lived and he largely feuded with Abyss, but he failed to make much of an impression with American fans until his time on Lucha Underground as the supernatural luchador Mil Muertes.

9 Yoshi Tatsu

Remember Yoshi Tatsu? Dating back from the pre-Asuka days when WWE respected Japanese wrestlers even less, he had an uneventful run as a jobber in the USA before finally returning to his home country and signing with New Japan Pro Wrestling for a disastrous run remembered for an incident where he suffered a broken neck via botched Styles Clash.

However, Yoshi has since moved on to the competition, All Japan Pro Wrestling, where he’s had a great deal more success, winning a couple of titles and signing with the company full-time in 2020.

8 Kevin Nash

Kevin Nash’s earliest appearances in American pro wrestling happened with WCW, where he spent three years and several gimmicks trying to make something pop off. First, he was “Steel” in the tag team Master Blasters, then he was the explicitly Wizard of Oz themed Oz, followed by the gambling mobster Vinnie Vegas.

By mid-1993, however, Nash would go to the World Wrestling Federation and establish himself as Diesel before returning to his old employers and getting a certain degree of professional revenge.

7 Kazuchika Okada

Okada’s time in TNA has become infamous thanks to a racist gimmick that (among other factors) would cost the company its working relationship with NJPW – magnified by Okada’s ascent into becoming one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling.

At the time, Okada was just a Young Lion out on an excursion and paying his dues on the bottom rung of a company largely uninterested in developing new talent. Nobody working for TNA would have imagined some kid on a study abroad program would become a superstar.

6 Luchasaurus

Leaving WWE developmental was probably the best thing that could have happened to Luchasaurus. As Judas Devlin, he hadn’t yet progressed beyond NXT TV jobber when he left the company and became Vibora a few years later on Lucha Underground, a persona he decided to capitalize on outside of the show by adopting the Luchasaurus gimmick.

Eventually, he’d end up with All Elite Wrestling and become one of the most popular acts in the company.

5 Tanga Loa

Tanga Loa’s journey into becoming a multi-time tag team champion in NJPW begins at WWE, where the son of the legendary Haku/Meng was cast as a Mexican street criminal named Camacho, the sidekick of Hunico.

On his own, Camacho hardly set the world on fire as a mid-card heel on NXT before eventually leaving the company. After spending a hot minute in TNA, he’d join up with NJPW’s Bullet Club alongside with his adoptive brother, Tama Tonga.

4 Kenzo Suzuki

A former NJPW Young Lion, Kenzo Suzuki worked for WWE from 2004 to 2005, where he was briefly groomed for an anti-American gimmick under the name Hirohito. That didn’t come to fruition, but Suzuki still debuted on the main roster, eventually becoming tag team champ alongside Rene Dupree and, uh, battle rapping John Cena in an otherwise forgettable run.

Suzuki would later go to All Japan and adopt the name KENSO, where he’s spent the last decade to much greater success than in WWE.

3 Triple H

This may come as a shock, but WWE Company Man Hunter Hearst Helmsley spent the year 1994 at the company’s blood rival, WCW, under the names Terror Risin’, the somehow worse Terra Ryzing, and eventually Jean-Paul Levesque, a sophisticated French guy who hung out with Lord Steven Regal.

Helmsley jumped ship to WWE after that, but not before getting into a feud with Alex Wright that actually resulted in a PPV match at Starrcade.

2 Sami Callihan

NXT is generally a great place for indie wrestling talent, but it doesn’t always work out. Sami Callihan was a known commodity in promotions like CZW, EVOLVE, and Dragon Gate USA, and signed to WWE in 2013, but only made his TV debut in 2015 as the vaguely gothic hacker Solomon Crowe, which largely failed to excite the excitable Full Sail crowds.

Callihan left the company soon after, and would eventually become a top guy in Impact Wrestling, where he’d hold the World Championship and even put the hacker gimmick to more effective use.

1 Lance Archer

Out of all these guys, Lance Archer is a unique case to look at because he struggled in two companies before really developing into someone exciting. In TNA, he was (among a few other gimmicks) Lance Rock, working a fake rock star gimmick in a comedy tag team before becoming Vance Archer in WWE where he made even less of an impression.

However, nearly a decade later, NJPW would establish Archer as a murderous giant, creating enough of a reputation that AEW brought him in with a good amount of hype.

Next: 10 AEW Wrestlers You Forgot Were in TNA First