Unluckiest wrestlers

[Arch Stanton]

2 minutes ago, RedTwoster said:

Adam Cole is another shout - every time things seem to be on the up for him in AEW, he suffers another injury. He seems like such a lovely guy too, if you listen to his podcast or watch his Twitch streams. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.

This cunt must be one of the luckiest wrestlers ever! How he's managed to land such high profile spots in multiple major promotions looking like he does has always completely baffled me. Being a nice guy must really go a long way. 

[Lorne Malvo]

I don't like him, but Austin Theory is pretty unlucky in that his biggest cheerleader Vince McMahon 'resigned' as it looked like they were on the cusp of giving him a pretty heavy push. 

For all of Triple H's faults as a booker, at least he had the sense to pull back on the Theory experiment. 

[Callum1993]

53 minutes ago, RedTwoster said:

Mustafa Ali must look at the Elimination Chamber that resulted in Kofi-mania, thinking ‘what if?’ given that Kofi replaced him in the match. Maybe he was never set to get the same level of shine that Kingston did, but who knows?

Adam Cole is another shout - every time things seem to be on the up for him in AEW, he suffers another injury. He seems like such a lovely guy too, if you listen to his podcast or watch his Twitch streams. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.

Jason Jordan is also extremely unfortunate - suffering a career-ending injury during the push of his life, as ‘Kurt Angle’s son’. He was starting to get really over too, and was playing the part well. He was easy to dislike, and there was more than a hint of what Dominik Mysterio would become in how he was portrayed. He seemed to be heading along the right track. 

Ali was also scheduled to win Money in the Bank that same year before they pivoted to Lesnar winning it as a surprise entrance. Also unlucky to be chosen to lead the god awful ‘Retribution’ faction. Slapjack for fuck sake! 

[theringmaster]

3 hours ago, jm29195 said:

William Regal - 2008. Recovers from addiction, turns his life around, well respected backstage. Gets his first main event push, and then is apparently suspended for testing positive for some sort of performance enhancing drug that he didn't even realise was one. Never gets another push like it, despite others like Jeff Hardy for example, being given multiple chances. Always felt bit sorry for him, really.

Whilst that is true, Regal came through in the back end of World of Sport and went onto to have work in America for the next 30+ years, got himself a cushy nxt trainer job, got fired and walked straight into AEW and then left to get back his old job.

 

Regal is low key one of the most successful workers of all time

[davertfnewman]

Alex Wright - got a nice push as a heel in '97, had won the cruiserweight title, the TV title, was apparently en route to the US title, could've fit in a Horsemen group (the right people liked him), the nWo (was young enough and cool enough, comparatively), but suffered a brain aneurysm that understandably made him a guy who wasn't going to take risks and was going to play it safe and ended up in a lower card pairing with, shudder, Disco Inferno.

[SwayWays]

13 hours ago, jm29195 said:

William Regal - 2008. Recovers from addiction, turns his life around, well respected backstage. Gets his first main event push, and then is apparently suspended for testing positive for some sort of performance enhancing drug that he didn't even realise was one. Never gets another push like it, despite others like Jeff Hardy for example, being given multiple chances. Always felt bit sorry for him, really.

Always left me a little heart broken, king of the ring, power hungry GM. 

 

I felt he had the best chance of being the first British champion, it felt like all the stars had aligned, until they never. But considering he spent a good portion of his career not knowing he had a broken neck and subsequent drug addiction.. He considers himself a success story the life he's had since. 

[The King of Old School]

On 9/10/2025 at 11:35 AM, BomberPat said:

I think it's unlucky in that a drug possession arrest certainly wouldn't, and hasn't, curtailed the careers of an awful lot of wrestlers in other countries, but the combination of Japan having a very heavy-handed approach to enforcing drug laws and there being fewer opportunities for women in wrestling in general, means it's something that she has been unable to meaningfully come back from, while people who have done far worse got little more than a slap on the wrist for it.

None of that really matters what anyone else has done.

I just don't think someone can count themselves unlucky that there career hasn't taken off how they wanted because they were busted for a drug arrest.  

[Arch Stanton]

I can't think of any great examples off the top of my head, but was there anybody that really got an unlucky break when WCW was bought out by WWF? Obviously some big names got very lucky out of that deal, when they got to sit at home on fat contracts for a couple of years, but there must have been others whose careers were just on an upward trajectory at that time that got completely derailed by that deal.

[Carbomb]

19 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

I can't think of any great examples off the top of my head, but was there anybody that really got an unlucky break when WCW was bought out by WWF? Obviously some big names got very lucky out of that deal, when they got to sit at home on fat contracts for a couple of years, but there must have been others whose careers were just on an upward trajectory at that time that got completely derailed by that deal.

DDP and Jeff Jarrett come to mind, though I don't know how much Jarrett got for sitting at home. Luger?

EDIT: I do appreciate their careers were already in full flow, if you weel.

Edited September 11, 2025 by Carbomb
Lou Macari

[tiger_rick]

35 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

I can't think of any great examples off the top of my head, but was there anybody that really got an unlucky break when WCW was bought out by WWF? Obviously some big names got very lucky out of that deal, when they got to sit at home on fat contracts for a couple of years, but there must have been others whose careers were just on an upward trajectory at that time that got completely derailed by that deal.

Kid Romeo!

[SaitoRyo]

41 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

I can't think of any great examples off the top of my head, but was there anybody that really got an unlucky break when WCW was bought out by WWF? Obviously some big names got very lucky out of that deal, when they got to sit at home on fat contracts for a couple of years, but there must have been others whose careers were just on an upward trajectory at that time that got completely derailed by that deal.

Not that he was 'unlucky' per se, but Jerry Lawler quit WWE in protest of them firing his wife Stacy 'The Kat' Carter. He was banking on going to WCW and would have been brought in for their mooted reboot, but WWE bought them like a month after his WWE walkout and it never happened. And then Stacy divorced him a few months after that (which paved the way for his WWE return, in fairness).

[boshealecta]

It’s gotta be Kane!

In some kinda chronological order.
 

Burnt as a child in a fire in which his parents die, locked away in an institute. At some point leaves the institute to have a girlfriend called Katy but she dies in a car crash.  Gets into wrestling. Finds out his family friend is his Dad. Wins the WWF title for just 24 hours. Finds out his brother caused the fire. His Dad turns on him. Makes a new best friend called X Pac. He stabs him in the back and nicks his new girlfriend.  Discovers that he has no physical scars just mental. Forces Lita to be his girlfriend and gets her pregnant.  She weirdly develops Stockholm syndrome and ends up loving him and wanting the baby but Snitsky ruins that. Lita cheats on him. I’ll stop there….

Apart from Kane I’d say the Von Eric’s in terms of tragedy. In terms of wrestling opportunities then maybe Ahmed Johnson. Seems like he should have been huge and the next Hogan for the company. But injuries, joining the nation etc just meant he never reached where he could have. 

[CTXRussomark]

2 hours ago, Arch Stanton said:

I can't think of any great examples off the top of my head, but was there anybody that really got an unlucky break when WCW was bought out by WWF? Obviously some big names got very lucky out of that deal, when they got to sit at home on fat contracts for a couple of years, but there must have been others whose careers were just on an upward trajectory at that time that got completely derailed by that deal.

There's probably an element of rose tinted glasses because everything else was so dull/old/played out by that point, but I remember Jason Jett (the old EZ Money from ECW) being a very short-lived highlight in the final few weeks of WCW.  Felt like he was heading towards a decent position on the card but completely disappeared once the buyout happened. 

[RedTwoster]

Mark Jindrak must wonder every day how his life would be had he not been tossed out of Evolution before it got going. A real sliding doors moment for the guy.

[unfitfinlay]

I don’t know if you’d call it “bad luck” exactly but I’ve always been strangely fascinated by how Lars Sullivan’s career went.

He had a panic attack right before he was supposed to start a Wrestlemania program with Cena and that was basically him. He never ended up doing anything of note. Think he only had a couple of matches outside of NXT after that.

What really gets me is that WWE fined him $100,000 for racist and homophobic posts he’d made years before. Their logic was that he was going to be a big star with the Cena feud so would easily make it back. Assuming they didn’t let him off with it at some point, there’s a very good chance he actually lost money working for WWE.