Role Ending Misdemeanor / Professional Wrestling

Here are some of the biggest cautionary tales for any aspiring booker or pro wrestler to avoid, lest they see their career crash and burn before it even starts.

There is a two-week waiting period (after the termination of a role) before an example can be added. This ensures the job loss is accurately reported, actually sticks, and avoids knee-jerk reactions.

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Movements

#MeToo

In January 2018, inspired by the #MeToo movement, several female wrestlers and fans opened up about predatory behavior from promoters and wrestlers.

• Former owner of IPW and current owner of Spotlight Daniel Edler was discovered to have manipulated an underage trainee, sent them inappropriate messages, and implicitly coerced them into sex against their will.
• Another girl stated that she'd been in an abusive relationship with James Davis while she was a 15-year-old trainee at IPW. Progress Wrestling immediately cut all ties with him and deleted all videos featuring him from their channel.
• Pollyanna opened up that the reason she'd mostly retired in late 2016 was to get away from a person in a position of power she'd been in an abusive relationship with.^note People figured out thanks to Will Ospreay's reaction that it was Ospreay's Swords of Essex stablemate Scott Wainwright. After seeing him backstage at a Progress event after specifically telling the company to keep them away from each other, she immediately quit the company. This person was then fired.

#SpeakingOut

A large number of accusations of sexual abuse, abusive relationships, and physical assault thinly disguised as wrestling training came out in June 2020 in what became known as the "Speaking Out" movement.

• El Ligero, Jack Gallagher, and Travis Banks, all three of them up-and-coming stars with renowned fame in the indie UK circuit who signed up with WWE and performed on the NXT UK brand, were fired and unpersoned by WWE.
• David Starr deleted all his social media and effectively retired from wrestling after being exposed as a rapist and admitted the crime.
• Ties were severed with Alexander Dean in several Irish promotions after Debbie Keitel came forward with accusations of gaslighting, stalking, and abuse towards her in training.
• Joey Ryan, Dave Crist, and Michael Elgin were all fired by Impact Wrestling due to sexual assault accusations. Ryan also closed down his own wrestling promotion Bar Wrestling, and Dave Crist's brother Jake publicly distanced himself from Dave by breaking the partnership between their wrestling schools.
• Marty Scurll got accused of taking advantage of an inebriated 16-year-old. As a result, Ring of Honor suspended him and by January 2021, the promotion let him go through a mutual agreement. Since then he has managed to secure a place in Puerto Rican promotion CWA, but for obvious reasons, no major company has even attempted to touch him.
• CHIKARA as an entire company was closed down in the same wave of accusations after several main wrestlers were called out, and most of the wrestlers walked out in protest of Mike Quackenbush's handling of events.

Countries

America

• Downplayed with Buck Zumhofe, who served three years for having sexual encounters with a minor back in 1986, but was allowed back into the AWA after his sentence in 1989 along with a brief stint and toy deal with WWF in 1991. It wasn't until 2014 when his career^note  and his "Rock n Roll Wrestling" promotion at the time finally came to an end when he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for further molestation charges and attempting to flee the court following his conviction.
• Sherri Martel's back problems led to her getting hooked on oxycodone, or "hillbilly heroin". In 1993, Vince McMahon summoned her to his office and informed her that her services were no longer required. WCW was a bit more accommodating, even allowing Sherri to take time off for detox, but in 2000 she relapsed and was released for good. Sherri would later pass away via a drug overdose in June 2007.
• In a case that was more of a Career-Ending Misdemeanor, Tully Blanchard not passing a drug test in the WWF in late 1989 not only led to his soon-to-expire contract with the promotion not being renewed but also had the side effect of the NWA/WCW reneging an offer they had extended to him to return to them once his WWF contract expired. This basically ended Blanchard's up-and-coming wrestling career in The '80s despite him being one of the founding members of the legendary Power Stable The Four Horsemen.^note It would also seriously screw over Arn Anderson, as NWA/WCW's offer was to the tag team of Anderson and Blanchard combined; having lost his tag team partner, Anderson saw his offer cut from $250,000 per year to $150,000. Having just left the WWF and with really nowhere else to go (because the territories just died) he had no choice but to take it. He would only wrestle in half a dozen matches through The '90s, with his last high-profile match taking place during the infamous Heroes of Wrestling event in 1999. He continues working in the wrestling industry to this day, however, currently employed in All Elite Wrestling as a coach and manager, where he even got to have another televised match in 2021.
• After nearly stabbing Arn Anderson to death with a pair of scissors during a drunken brawl in England in October 1993,^note before 2 Cold Scorpio was able to break it up, Sid Eudy was suspended and then quickly fired from WCW. This presented a problem for WCW's bookers, as Sid was scheduled to dethrone heel world champion Big Van Vader at Starrcade (footage of him as champ had already been taped for the syndicated shows), Ric Flair ended up taking his place. Eric Bischoff would tastelessly^note and rather pointlessly, as at the time the incident wasn't widely known outside of hardcore wrestling circles, as noted by the public's muted reaction to it bring this incident up during a Worked Shoot promo with Sid at the start of the Millionaire's Club vs. New Blood storyline (and subsequent mass vacation of all titles) in 2000.
• Big Van Vader was fired from WCW in September 1995 for starting - and badly losing - a locker room fight against Paul Orndorff. It's been speculated that he was fired mainly for losing the fight, as getting completely demolished by a guy that's roughly 200 lbs. lighter, has only one good arm, and was wearing flip-flops in a real fight pretty much killed Vader's credibility as a monster heel.^note It's also been speculated that Bischoff leaked the news of the fight and subsequent firing to Pro Wrestling Illustrated (meaning even non-smarks knew about it) after learning that Vader would next go to the WWF, in an effort to hurt Vader's drawing power there, though Vince McMahon (with help from Shawn Michaels) did a fine job of that on his own.
• Nick Bockwinkel was reportedly fired as WCW Commissioner in 1995 after, while announcing a Hulk Hogan vs. Vader Steel Cage match for Bash at the Beach 1995 during The Great American Bash 1995 pre-show, he forgot the name of the former PPV during the announcement itself.
• Paul Roma was told to make the young upstart Alex Wright look good in their match at WCW's SuperBrawl V, February 19, 1995, en route to losing the match. Roma instead no-sold Wright's offense, mocked his goofy dance (which got a Face reaction despite Roma being the Heel here) and actually kicked out of Wright's schoolboy rollup pin attempt, though the ref counted to three anyway. WCW fired Roma after this and he has only ever been seen in small independents ever since. As for Wright, following similar incidents through the rest of his WCW run,^note such as when "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan would do the same thing to Wright (now under his Berlyn character) in a match a few years later at Fall Brawl 1999, though in that case it wasn't nearly to the degree Roma did and as such Duggan was not punished for his actions; furthermore, Duggan was already a replacement for Buff Bagwell, who outright refused to have a match with Wright and put him over, he unsurprisingly retired from pro wrestling the moment WCW closed down.
• Bull Nakano was released from the WWF in 1995 for being caught in possession of cocaine. She later went on to wrestle in WCW for a few years.
• Hashif Khan found himself held down several times while wrestling in Calgary because he often injured wrestlers with his stiff wrestling style, as he was notorious for his martial arts background and excess of energy. According to a rumor, however, his entire tenure there was cut short when he made an obscene drawing in an autograph for a young female fan, which scandalized her parents into complaining to the management. That being said though, Khan would later find much success under his real name: Shinya Hashimoto.
• The late Nelson Frazier Jr., known by his various ring names King Mabel, Viscera, and Big Daddy V:
  • In his first run as King Mabel, he was Demoted to Extra by the bookers in 1995 when he performed a stiff seated senton on Diesel during their WWF Championship match at SummerSlam 1995 that severely injured the latter. Mabel was already known as an unsafe worker who refused to perform his most dangerous moves properly and it took Diesel himself to convince the management not to fire him. However, the problem would turn even worse later on in the year when Mabel infamously injured The Undertaker with a similarly stiff leg drop to the face. The bookers waited for Undertaker to recover so that he could then go on to feud with and win a revenge Casket match against Mabel at In Your House 5: Seasons Beatings, with Mabel's contract being terminated not too long after that in early 1996 (his last appearance was the 1996 Royal Rumble match), though Mabel himself would make his return to the WWF two years later.
  • During the 2000s, now as Viscera, he would be fired once again, rumoredly, for doing a number while high on cocaine. Apparently, Shawn Michaels reported to the execs that he had just seen Big Vis doing the longest line of coke he had seen in his life (which means, given Michaels' well-known substance abuse issues, that it had to be a freaking long line), and the latter couldn't even deny it due to his own state of mind.^note It should be noted that this rumor hasn't been confirmed, or even repeated, by anyone of note in the business. Again, however, Viscera would be rehired some years later.
• Cathy Dingman's tenure in the WWE as "Barbara 'B.B.' Bush" was short-lived because she was discovered having an affair with the married Bob Holly in 1999.
• Mark Henry was sent to Stampede Wrestling in order to "learn discipline" after he threatened to beat up Shawn Michaels, who had been stealing his crutches as a prank while Henry had an injured ankle. Similar incidents through the 2000s where Henry lashed back at backstage bullying got him sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling too.
• Eddie Guerrero was arrested for DUI in 2001 and released by the WWE; five months passed before he returned to the company^note While he was gone, he worked this match with Rey Mysterio Jr. and a very young (and blonde) CM Punk in IWA-Mid South of all places. Having dealt with many of his personal demons in that period, Eddie returned to enjoy the greatest success of his career (up until his unexpected death in 2005).
• Curt Hennig and Scott Hall were released from the WWE in May 2002 for their roles in the Plane Ride From Hell, in which Henning got into a fight with Brock Lesnar on the plane, while Hall had become so intoxicated that he had to use a wheelchair to get through customs.
• A contestant on the third season of WWE Tough Enough in 2002, Lisa, was cut from the competition after having a psychotic breakdown, breaking into the hidden camera room and climbing onto the roof of the house. She was hospitalized but fled when her parents came to check her out, and she managed to have an entire wing of a local airport shut down while people tried to find her. Her fellow contestants (and by extension the audience) were told she left because she decided wrestling wasn't the right career for her.
• Teddy Hart, who became the youngest man to ever get a WWE developmental deal in 1998, has been fired and blacklisted from several companies due to his prima donna attitude that makes him a pain to work with backstage, and the fact that he's such an Attention Whore and Spot Monkey that he'll even refuse to go through with previously agreed finishes or the script (where applicable) and show off with insane high-flying moves that put himself and his opponents in danger. That developmental deal lasted four years until he was released from WWE for "attitude problems" in 2002 (though he got two more WWE developmental deals in 2005 and 2006). He was released from Ring of Honor and TNA in 2004 after Sabu had to separate him and CM Punk (he'd make a one-night ROH return in 2009 and be offered a TNA return in 2016). He pisses off so many people that some companies (such as AAA in 2010, before he returned as part of los Perros Del Mal at Triplemania XX) admit to firing him out of fear that some coworkers will attempt to murder him.
• Jeff Hardy:
  • Jeff Hardy, Mr. Fanservice and an expert at working the crowd (though with increasingly poor workmanship in his actual wrestling), originally lost his WWE job in 2003 due to his drug abuse; he was hired a year later by TNA (a company with a notably less stringent drug-testing policy). He then lost his job with TNA due to no-showing a number of events and then was rehired by WWE a few months later. He blitzed through several Wellness policy strikes before leaving to "heal from injuries", not coincidentally around the time he was arrested for steroid and prescription pill trafficking. TNA rehired him in January 2010, and he held it together for about nine months before falling off the wagon, eventually culminating at the 2011 Victory Road PPV where Jeff went out to wrestle Sting while stoned out of his gourd. Hardy had to make a public apology when he returned and TNA told him that it would be his last chance.
  • In December 2021, Jeff Hardy was performing at a WWE Live house show. Spectators at the event noted that he appeared to increasingly slow down during the match, before leaving the ring completely after giving the hot tag to Drew McIntyre, interacting with fans on his way to the back of the arena. Shortly afterwards he was removed from the WWE's touring roster, before being released a few days later. It would later be revealed that WWE assumed from the incident that Hardy suffered a relapse from his substance abuse issues (much like a lot of people who witnessed it, admittedly) and released him after rejecting the company's offer to enter him into rehab. Hardy, for his part, claimed that the company gave him the "Go to rehab or go home" ultimatum BEFORE they got the results of his drug test back, which he passed, explaining his refusal to go to rehab (though why he walked out on the aforementioned match is still a mystery).
  • After his release from WWE, Jeff would begin working alongside his brother Matt in All Elite Wrestling starting in March 2022... only to be indefinitely suspended without pay over two months later in June after being arrested for driving under the influence.
• Ring of Honor had lost both of its founders to such events. Gabe 'Jimmy Bowers' Sapolsky for booking an exceptionally tasteless and widely mocked angle, was simply him lapsing at his job but Rob 'Fun Athletic Guy' Feinstein was caught trying to get an underaged boy to consent in 2004. Among wrestlers not named Teddy Hart, Adam Pearce was effectively banned from the promotion for telling a merchandise agent picked up by consequence of the Sinclair purchase that he wanted to beat the piss out of him.
• Amy Zidian was released from WWE after being incredibly rude to several people, including Vickie Guerrero and Stephanie McMahon. She legitimately didn't know who the latter two were but refused to apologize after she was told their identities.
• A family member of Torrie Wilson's fell ill suddenly and she had to immediately go home to see them. Through sheer bad luck, she was unable to get a hold of anyone in the office to notify them. She ended up missing a Raw and a PPV that she was advertised for and was fired by the company. However, she was rehired back a few days later. She theorised that it would have been a PR disaster for them if word got out.
• Kurt Angle was released from WWE in 2006 allegedly for his refusal to go into rehab.
• While he wasn't fired for it, getting busted for marijuana possession in 2006 led then ECW and WWE Champion Rob Van Dam to drop both of those titles in two days (one on Raw, the other on ECW the next night) before serving out his sixty-day Wellness suspension. Contrary to popular belief Sabu (who was with RVD and also arrested) didn't get fired either, he served the same 60-day suspension and stuck around for another few months when it was up.
• Umaga was fired from WWE in June 2009 after failing a wellness policy drug test for the second time and refusing to go to rehab. He would pass away roughly six months later due to a heart attack brought on by a drug overdose.
• In 2009, Mr. Kennedy was fired from WWE among accusations that he was reckless and unsafe in the ring, having possibly threatened Randy Orton's head and neck with a botched suplex. He had previously been implicated in a group steroid scandal and suspended for thirty days, which didn't precisely help.
• Serena Deeb, of CM Punk's Straight Edge Society, was let go in 2010 for excessive partying and drinking in public. So not only was she becoming a detriment to WWE's image and acting unprofessionally, she was contradicting the character she played. However, take in mind that weeks earlier, Serena helped save CM Punk from Kane's wrath by showing the only thing that would help clear his name: footage of her relapse. It just was legitimate this time. WWE brought her back in 2017 for a spot in the WWE Mae Young Classic and offered her a coach's position at the Performance Center.
• A subversion happened with Daniel Bryan in 2010. During the segment where the Nexus debuted, several sponsors complained about a part where Bryan choked ring announcer Justin Roberts with his tie, as it brought back memories of the Chris Benoit murders. According to Roberts's autobiography, Vince McMahon reportedly loved it but publicly released Bryan to appease the sponsors - with the full intention of hiring him back a few months later.
• 7 ft Isis the Amazon was advertised for the third season of NXT as "Aloisa" in 2010 but was cut from the show after it was found that she had done erotic fetish photos online. She wasn't released, however, until she actively started complaining about it to any interviewer who asked, which might explain why her replacement and eventual season winner Kaitlyn faced no repercussions despite having similar photos online.
• Talk radio host Bubba the Love Sponge was fired from TNA in May 2010 after an on-air rant against Awesome Kong during an interview devolved into a racist and misogynistic tirade.
• In August 2010, Taryn Terrell (a.k.a. former WWE Diva Tiffany) was fired after getting arrested for assaulting her then-husband Drew McIntyre. She was initially just suspended and then released towards the end of the year.
• While not fired per se, the name Nick Gage, who was highly decorated in CZW, would become fodder for angles after fans of the promotion identified him as an attempted bank robber to the authorities in December of 2010, leading to his arrest. Drew Gulak would name him and several others who left CZW for various legal-related problems during his "Campaign For A Better Combat Zone", and Jim Cornette would refer to him as "the bank-addicted drug robber" when reviewing his matches.
• Lince Dorado would be fired from Chikara in 2011, either for appearing in public without his mask or for no showing one too many events, the former story being more popular.
• AW, the manager for the Prime Time Players, was released after he made an off-color reference to the Kobe Bryant rape case (which was aired live on Raw no less) in 2012, although he had made several other statements in the weeks leading up to it (and Big Show had referenced the same incident on Smackdown, a pre-taped show that could easily remove them).
• Kelly Kelly invoked this in late 2012. She had wanted to take a hiatus from the company for a while and disappeared for a few months, before making a couple of reappearances. However, she wished to leave altogether due to nagging injuries and the office refused to release her. She responded by taking part in a very risque photo shoot for a calendar. After refusing to take some of the photos down from her website, the office released her.
• Ivelisse Vélez was abruptly let go in 2012 and the reason was said to be "attitude problems" - and a rumour went around that it was because she had been acting very arrogant and believing she would be on the main roster soon. She denied these claims and later said that she had spoken up against trainer Bill DeMott and his abuse of trainees. She claimed that she was released to be made an example of.
• Brad Maddox was fired from WWE in November 2015 after footage surfaced of him calling the audience of a house show "pricks". Maddox has never been seen in wrestling again after his dismissal.^note The fact that a sex tape featuring him and WWE wrestler Paige surfaced afterwards, with Maddox being widely assumed to have been the one who leaked it, did not help any matters for him.
• Double Subverted with Emma, who was released by WWE in 2014 after she was arrested for shoplifting (though, in reality, it was less deliberate shoplifting and more having difficulties with a self-checkout machine). As it happens, this is a literal example — as is the case in most shoplifting arrests, she was charged with misdemeanor petty theft. Almost immediately, it became clear that fans and wrestling sites alike already had their claws out ready to defend her, seeing as she was fired for what was clearly an honest mistake while other superstars have done far worse and are still with the company. The notoriously PR-conscious WWE, seeing an oncoming wave of bad publicity and likely wanting to keep their sole Australian on the roster for an upcoming tour of the country, rehired her roughly an hour after her release was announced. However, she was released for good in late 2017 for using Twitter to complain about being underutilized on TV.
• A really baffling case in 2014 was Brian Blaze's absence from PCW Sacred Ground: Chapter Five, where he was to be part of the Big F'N Deal vs Washington Bullets Tag Team match that was four consecutive years in the making. Neither the fans nor the staff rejected Blaze because of his legal trouble, Blaze physically couldn't make it because he was being held in prison for the past five months. Who wanted him shut away wasn't clear as the the police officer who arrested Blaze said he didn't want to and went so far as to offer to testify on Blaze's behalf in court. The witness had to be shown Blaze multiple times from multiple angles before admitting it could have been him. The court initially dismissed Blaze's lawyer but then claimed that was an accident after Blaze had been found guilty. As Blaze had absolutely no criminal record, it would have been the perfect angle to garner sympathy for a babyface except it was a legitimate occurrence ruining Blaze's life, and rather than targeting him specifically he apparently was "just" the first scapegoat that could be found. Brian happened to resemble a wanted criminal evading police, happened to borrow a vehicle similar enough to one said criminal used in armed robbery, and having someone behind bars while said criminal continued to evade capture was apparently important enough for a thorough investigation and proper court case to be deemed unnecessary. The silver lining was that Brian Blaze's merchandise sold out at Sacred Ground and his innocence was proven with the funds raised, but it was a shocking example of the respect pro wrestlers no longer got from the general public. (There would have been riots if someone tried with, say, Junkyard Dog).
• Happened to Eli Drake twice; in 2014, he was let go from NXT (where he wrestled under the ring name "Slate Randall") after only a few months when he stood up to then-head coach Bill DeMott over his abuse of trainees. After that, he went to Impact Wrestling and enjoyed success there, even winning its world title, until he was released in 2019 for refusing to wrestle Tessa Blanchard and decrying the idea of intergender wrestling in general. Neither of these instances hurt his career much though, as he would later go on to perform for NWA and would return to WWE in 2021, years after DeMott resigned as trainer and was replaced by the more benevolent Matt Bloom.
• In July 2015, Hulk Hogan was released from WWE after a tape featuring him making racist comments was leaked to the public. Even more so, it was a sex tape that he was suing to try to prevent it from being released. The tape itself would eventually become this for Gawker Media, as Hogan subsequently sued the company into bankruptcy, and Univision, upon purchase of its assets, stated that all of its divisions except Gawker would continue to operate.
• On August 31, 2015, the girlfriend of then-WWE Champion Seth Rollins, NXT Diva Zahra Schreiber, got released for "inappropriate and offensive remarks". Back in 2012, she posted pro-Nazi artwork onto her Twitter account and somebody dug it out. She tried to defend it by stating swastikas stood for "peace", but her explanation fell apart when one of the photos was a pony à la My Little Pony with a swastika armband and a handlebar mustache, clearly meant as a send-off to Hitler. Granted, she was probably still on thin ice after the nude photo scandal earlier that year when somebody posted a nude photo of her to his social media accounts (the contents of which are automatically published by WWE.com), and then Rollins' then-fiancee Leighla Schultz posted a nude photo of him to her Twitter account. This was just it for them, seeing as she doesn't have the clout or leverage that Seth does and this wasn't too far off Hogan's firing for similar reasons.
• TNA Knockout Jessicka Havok was having a tryout match for in 2015 WWE. Things were apparently going well until fans who recognized her uncovered tweets she had made in 2011 using racist and homophobic slurs^note Havok was part of the Midwest Militia, whose biggest feuds then were with the black Soul Sisters, Dominican Marti Belle and Puerto Rican Mercedes Martinez in WSU, a promotion also known for its Butt-Monkey "boy diva". These facts were not enough to explain or excuse everything she tweeted, however, and Havok deleted most of them in the realization she had gone overboard. But once something is on the internet, it is really hard to get off the internet. In this case, the tweets came back to haunt her four years later - and started broadcasting them online. She ultimately wasn't hired.
• Masada of the Carnage Crew was offered a deal with TNA in April of 2016 which ended up not working out when he was arrested for stumbling around drunken in public (he slipped and hit his head), also getting company founder Jeff Jarrett in trouble by association (he was in the process of finalizing the deal with him) and Teddy Hart arrested (for having paid for Masada's alcohol, roughly 700 USD spent).
• Titus O'Neil almost faced this as he was almost fired after he had playfully grabbed Vince during the Daniel Bryan's retirement episode. Instead, he was suspended for 60 days which was originally 90.
• Subverted with NXT Diva Aliyah. Old tweets using racial slurs were uncovered on her account. However, WWE issued a statement that the tweets had been made by someone else using her account - not to mention being made when she was only seventeen - and she remained under contract. As this happened shortly after the previous incidents involving Jessicka Havok and Zahra Schreiber, WWE management quickly realized that fans were intentionally going back through women wrestler's social media to uncover incriminating things to get them fired - and put out a statement telling them to stop doing it.
• Retired wrestler "Nightmare" Ken Wayne was fired from his positions at NEW and OVW in 2016 following his conviction for possessing child porn.
• Following a rather controversial joke about Evolve Wrestling's announcer Joanna Rose, Joey Styles was fired from his position as Evolve's commentator in November 2016. To make matters worse, he was also fired from Progress Wrestling and CHIKARA not long after, before deleting all of his social media accounts and effectively retiring from the business altogether.
• Jimmy Jacobs was fired in October 2017 from his job with the WWE Creative Team after he put a selfie of himself posing with members of Bullet Club on his Instagram page when they "invaded" an episode of RAW, a la D-Generation X doing the same thing to WCW.
• Rich Swann got suspended from the WWE on December 10, 2017, during the middle of a push for the Cruiserweight Championship after being arrested for multiple charges involving domestic abuse and kidnapping allegations of his wife Su Yung. While these charges were later dropped, Swann was released from the company on February 15, 2018, via a mutual agreement from both parties.
• The tag team of Enzo Amore and Big Cass would leave WWE under these circumstances. Enzo Amore was released from WWE and stripped of the Cruiserweight title in January 2018 after sexual assault allegations were made against him, although the firing was due to being under investigation since October and not telling the company about it until the accused victim broke her silence hours before the Raw 25th Anniversary. While she was later ruled to have made up the allegations, he wasn't hired back allegedly due to his poor backstage attitude. Meanwhile, Big Cass was released in June of the same year due to a series of incidents instigated by him, such as being publicly intoxicated during a tour, ferociously defending President Donald Trump's politics towards Muslims to Sami Zayn^note Probably worth noting here that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was one of Trump's biggest campaign donors, and his wife Linda was on Trump's cabinet, a man of Syrian descent, and making unwanted advances towards his ex-girlfriend Carmella.
• Subverted with Jim Cornette's departure from NWA Powerrr in 2019. He made a questionable joke which could be interpreted as racist and/or tasteless while doing color commentary. NWA immediately disavowed the comment but were willing to let Cornette keep his job, provided he apologized. Cornette, however, believed that his enemies were targeting him over the remark and that if the production crew felt it was objectionable, they would've edited the joke out during post-production, since the show was taped in advance. He refused to apologize (by hanging up on NWA Powerrr lead producer Dave Lagana during a phone call after Lagana asked him to apologize) and instead quit his role completely.
  • Cornette has built up a reputation for this trope, with his detractors saying he's either been fired or walked out on every promotion he's worked for. That's not completely accurate, but he was fired as head of WWE's developmental program after a long series of disagreements with the home office in Stamford culminated in him slapping Santino Marella, was pushed out of TNA by Vince Russo after his biggest backer Jeff Jarrett invoked this trope himself (see the next entry), and had what he described as "a mutual we don't need to be around each other anymore" exit from Ring of Honor after threatening to beat up one of the employees in the ROH office. Cornette discusses all of these incidents on this episode of his podcast that was recorded shortly after the chicken joke mentioned above.
• Jeff Jarrett was "placed on an indefinite leave of absence" by TNA president Dixie Carter in 2009 after it came to light that Jarrett was having an affair with Karen Angle, the then-wife of Kurt Angle (though the two were already separated before the affair began) after Jarrett had previously denied this. Jarrett would eventually return to TNA where the whole thing was turned into a storyline, and would marry Karen in 2010, she often accompanies him to the ring today when he wrestles in AEW.
• Michael Elgin lost his booking job for Glory Pro Wrestling and many of his North American bookings after he was accused of covering up a sexual assault allegation against a student of his and pursuing an affair with the victim (which has actually been disputed, as he apparently only told the accuser to take it to the police, while the affair happened before any allegations of sexual assault by a third party were made), as well as badmouthing fellow wrestler Jeff Cobb of Hawaii's Action Zone, California's All Pro and PWG, also known as Lucha Underground's Matanza. Averted in New Japan, as he did manage to keep his job there.
• Wrestling legend Arn Anderson of The Four Horsemen was fired from his job as a WWE road agent in 2019 for allegedly^note It's questionable that this is what happened since no apparent action was taken against Fox allowing Alicia Fox to wrestle while intoxicated at a house event. He would appear on All Elite Wrestling months later.
• Alberto Del Rio was released from WWE in 2014 after attacking an employee who allegedly made a racist joke, which at the time he was largely cut slack for, but was a troubling sign of things to come. He was released from Impact Wrestling in 2018 after no-showing several events, including the Lucha Underground vs Impact Wrestling episode where he was supposed to compete in the main event. In 2020, he was arrested for sexual assault and kidnapping. Although the charges were eventually dropped on December 10, 2021, he was hired by UFC in March 2022 though only as a Spanish language commentator, as many agree that his reputation is so toxic, no respectable wrestling promotion will ever book him again.
• Lars Sullivan was an up-and-coming star on NXT, with WWE's upper management reportedly loving him and getting ready to give him a star push once he joined the main event roster in 2019. Those plans were largely scuttled soon after his Raw debut when his past activity on a bodybuilding forum was discovered, with his posts being full of racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks (despite, as it was revealed later, having acted in two gay porn movies before becoming a wrestler). While he was allowed to stay with WWE, he was fined and forced to attend sensitivity training along with having his role on television significantly diminished, which wasn't helped by a severe knee injury in June that kept him away from wrestling for over a year. He ultimately decided to quit wrestling altogether due to his severe anxiety issues and was released from WWE in January 2021.
• Jordan Myles (better known as ACH in Ring of Honor and the indies) was involved in a controversy with the WWE when they released a T-shirt for him that resembled blackface.^note Said shirt featured his name, with a pair of Rolling Stones-esque lips in between them on a plain black background. Naturally he took offence to this, accusing the company of being racist, but then upped the ante and took shots at his former employer Ring of Honor, going as far as to call Jay Lethal an "Uncle Tom", resulting in Booker T and other African-American wrestlers called him out for his aggressive comments. A month later, Myles quit the WWE after posting a profanity-filled rant video saying he wouldn't "work for racists" and claiming Jordan Myles is his "slave name". Needless to say, neither the WWE nor Ring of Honor will be in any hurry to invite him back any time soon. He mainly wrestled in Japan, since it seemed like no American promotion wanted anything to do with him, until 2022 when he started in Major League Wrestling.
• Jimmy Havoc was let go by AEW after allegations of physically assaulting a fan, as well as domestic abuse against his partner surfaced against him, and this was after he already got in hot water after having an altercation with Excalibur at Tony Schiavone's birthday party. Not much is known about his whereabouts following his release from AEW but some social media posts in 2021 indicate that he's gotten a regular job back in England and has no intention of wrestling again.
• Steve Cutler of The Forgotten Sons was let go by WWE after testing positive for COVID-19 he likely got from attending a New Year's Party held by Matt Cardona (aka Zack Ryder) and Chelsea Green. While superstars testing positive isn't anything new (Drew McIntyre tested positive while he was WWE Champion, which became one of the very few instances the pandemic was directly addressed onscreen), the fact that he didn't immediately disclose his diagnosis and put a lot of other wrestlers in immediate danger was what put him in hot water with the company.
• WWE's Senior Director of Talent Relations, Mark Carrano, was fired in April 2021 after it was made public that he had sent the recently-released Mickie James' belongings back to her in a trash bag. After his firing, several other former WWE talents spoke about how he was deeply unpopular backstage; Gail Kim, Maria Kanellis, and Jillian Hall all revealed that they received the trash bag treatment too, while Darren Young said that he was harassed by Carrano even after leaving the company. Even people who spoke positively of Carrano said that after acquiring the post, he had let the power go to his head.
• Willie Urbina, who was one of All Elite Wrestling's Spanish language announcers, was fired from the company in May 2021 after viewers noticed Urbina mocking Japanese wrestler Hikaru Shida's accent while believing that his mic was off (right before a commercial break).
• WWE writer Kenice Mobley was released in June 2021 alongside a batch of wrestlers after an interview surfaced in which she couldn't name then-WWE Champion Bobby Lashley (until after several tries, at least). While the interview wasn't outright given as the reason for her dismissal, the fact that she spoke in the interview about having just been hired by WWE, and the fact that wrestlers and non-wrestler employees usually aren't released at the same time, lend credence to the idea that it was because of it.
• Former professional beach volleyball player Canyon Ceman, who worked as Senior Director of Talent Development for WWE, was fired from that post in July 2021 after it was reported that he didn't see that Adam Cole's contract with the company would expire at the end of August of that year, despite part of his job involving overseeing expiration dates for contracts (as Cole would explain later, both he and WWE thought his contract would expire in December), allowing Cole to debut for rival promotion All Elite Wrestling only two weeks after his last WWE appearance. His contract expiring was such a shock to everyone that WWE had to ask him to sign a short extension so he could finish up his angle with Kyle O'Reilly, who would join Cole in AEW not long after.
• Greg Hamilton, a ring announcer for WWE since 2015, was fired in October 2021 for threatening to unleash WWE's lawyers onto rapper Westside Gunn after he sampled Hamiton's voice for his then-recently released song "Undertaker vs. Goldberg".
• On April 6th, 2022 not long after winning back the NXT Tag Team titles, MSK member Nash Carter (Zachary Wentz) was released due to "multiple allegations" from his estranged wife (Impact and former NXT wrestler Kimber Lee), as well as a leaked and very tasteless photograph of him impersonating Hitler ^note  Which seems very stupid, since he has an African American partner . As a result, the titles were vacated, with newcomers Pretty Deadly winning them the following week in a Gauntlet match. This hasn't hurt his career though, as since then he has reformed the Rascalz stable and is a regular on Impact Wrestling and the indys.
• Independent wrestler Chris Dickinson was accused of emotional and physical abuse by his ex-girlfriend Christina Von Eerie as well as sabotaging her career. As a result, he was pulled from several upcoming shows, including events from GCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling. He has since hired a legal team and filed a cease and desist against Von Eerie, accusing her of lying and demanding she remove her social media posts pertaining to the accusation. Von Eerie responded with a statement from her own legal team, asserting her right to speak out against Dickinson.
• Troy Donovan, who wrestled in WWE's NXT as "Two Dimes", one of Tony D'Angelo's enforcers, was released in June 2022 for what was said to be a "policy violation" without specifying the policy in question; it was later elaborated that he failed a drug test. Interestingly enough, since D'Angelo has a mafia gimmick, Donovan's absence was actually acknowledged onscreen by having D'Angelo saying that Two Dimes now "sleeps with the fishes" while standing on the edge of a bridge. A few months later, he resurfaced in AEW and other indy promotions under his old Cole Karter ringname.
• Vince McMahon ended up in a complicated, zig-zagging Death of a Thousand Cuts case of this:
  • In June 2022, he resigned from his position as chairman and CEO of WWE amid an investigation that he allegedly paid $12 million in hush money to hide affairs with four former female employees, with his daughter Stephanie taking over in the interim, while his son-in-law Triple H took over as content director. This would be upped to him announcing his retirement in July 2022 when he wound up in an additional scandal where he allegedly paid $14.6 million in "unrecorded expenses" in 2019, forcing WWE to restate its financial results for 2019, 2020, and 2021.
  • Things took a turn in when he came out of retirement in January 2023 to return as "Executive Chairman" for upcoming media negotiations^note At the time, WWE's deals with USA and FOX were set to expire the following year and a potential sale of the company, forcing himself back in the company on the grounds that he was still a majority shareholder and no negotiations could be finalized without his approval. However, this ultimately didn't work well in his favor — in September 2023, a merger was eventually finalized between WWE and Endeavor (the parent company of the UFC), but while Vince earned a lifetime chairman position, he was reduced to minority ownership and voting rights (marking the first time in WWE/F history that a McMahon wasn't in majority ownership of the company), and he was also unilaterally removed from any creative control by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, who was fully aware of his above-listed shenanigans and saw him as a massive liability on multiple business fronts, letting Nick Khan make business decisions unopposed and returning all creative power to Triple H and his team, in no small part thanks to the improved business within the WWE following him becoming head of creative when Vince first left. To summarize it all, while Vince McMahon didn't lose his de facto position within the company, his scandals ultimately cost him virtually all of the corporate and creative power he used to have.
  • The final nail in the coffin arrived in the January 2024, when former employee Janel Grant came forward with allegations against Vince about some of the horrible things he subjected her to, from sexual assault, sex trafficking, and much worse. Grant's attorney pointed out that Vince failed to pay Grant the agreed upon payment that enforced the NDA about her time with the company, voiding the agreement in the process. These allegations came mere days before the company's annual Royal Rumble event, so this caught everyone's attention. Slim Jim, a well known and long time sponsor of WWE, immediately paused their sponsorship with the company. Fearing that this would lead to even more loss of sponsorship revenue and even more terrible PR, TKO Company's CEO and COO, Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, all but forced Vince to resign any and all power he had left in the company, to which the latter agreed. While his attorney stated all of Grant's accusations were lies, the damage was done, as this all led to WWE scrubbing Vince from their websites, all of his merch taken down and has not been mentioned in any WWE programming since (even having his faced blurred out in the cutscenes of WWE 2k24), ending his WWE legacy in disgrace.
• Longtime WWE employee John Laurinaitis would also be caught in the crossfire once the scandals leaked out in June 2022, accused of partaking in sexual misconduct, with reports stating that Laurinaitis would either harass female corporate employees on his own or "tag team" with Vince.^note The first report about Vince's NDA payments in fact mentioned in regards to the woman involved that after ending their affair Vince "passed her like a toy" to Laurinaitis. He would be replaced by Bruce Prichard in late June 2022, before being terminated from the company by August 2022 after the Board of Directors completed its investigation.
• Brock Lesnar was also involved in the whole Vince and Janel Grant allegations, as Grant's attorney pointed out that Grant was used as a bargaining chip for a "Former UFC Champion" to resign with the company, and Brock is the only one who fits the description, not to mention him facing his own set of allegations from her as well. This led to WWE scrapping all of their plans with Lesnar for that year's Wrestlemania season, his merchandise being placed on discount sales on their website and the company, slowly but surely, removing him from all forms of media.
• CM Punk's run in AEW saw this happen to him twice, the second incident proving to be the fatal blow:
  • On September 4, 2022, during a media scrum after the AEW All Out event, Punk started insulting several people included his former friend Colt Cabana, Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, and Adam Page, ranting that he hated the rumors that he tried to get Cabana fired because he doesn't care about him and repeatedly calling the others stupid and incompetent. This led to a legitimate fight between him, Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, and Ace Steel (a friend of Punk who worked as a producer in AEW, making his first onscreen appearance on the episode of Dynamite before the event), leading to all of them, plus Christopher Daniels, Michael Nakazawa, and Brandon Cutler getting suspended indefinitely, though the latter three were reinstated after two weeks when it was determined that they were trying to break up the fight. Punk and the Elite were also stripped of their titles that they had won earlier that night (the World Championship and Trios Championships, respectively; the former was eventually won back by Jon Moxley in a tournament and Death Triangle won the latter in a championship match). The Elite made their return for Full Gear 2022 while Punk would eventually be reinstated and returned to the company during the premiere episode of AEW Collision on June 17, 2023, having been the only one to officially vacate his title in AEW in the interim (all other instances have had interim champions with a unification happening once the original champion was OK again).
  • Punk's contract would be terminated after an incident at 2023's All In event in London, with said incident being a legitimate backstage fight against Jack Perry after Perry insulted him for not being willing to use real glass for a stunt that culminated in the two being separated by Samoa Joe, with Punk later going to Tony Khan and getting heated at him to the point where Punk caused backstage monitors to fall onto him and some reports even saying Punk tried to physically lunge at Tony. This proved to be the final straw as Punk was terminated with cause on September 2, 2023, while Perry was suspended indefinitely for his part in the incident as well. Punk would make his shocking return to WWE at Survivor Series in November 2023 (as of January 2024, Perry hasn't been seen or even mentioned on AEW programming since All In, instead making a surprise appearance in New Japan Pro-Wrestling that month).
• WWE's Spanish announcer Quetzalli Bulnes was fired from the company in mid-November 2022 after allowing Spanish YouTuber Falbak to jump over the barricade during a WWE tour in Mexico as part of a storyline the two were waiving online. It was soon revealed that this stunt was done without authorization from WWE's office. The incident also had the side effect of cancelling the Spanish-language shows she participated in, La Previa and El Brunch (which usually involved Spanish-language Youtubers, and from where she and Falbak met).
• Mandy Rose was released from her contract on December 14, 2022, the day after dropping the NXT Women's Championship to Roxanne Perez, due to the discovery of explicit material being produced and sold online through a fanpage run by Rose herself. (Mattel, a major sponsor partner of WWE took offense to the material, forcing the company's hand.)^note If you're wondering why a WWE wrestler is doing what's essentially homemade softcore porn, the reason is simple: it pays better, it's a lot safer, and it doesn't involve paying travel expenses. In subsequent social media posts Rose seemed almost relieved that she was no longer obligated to work for WWE.

Europe

• At March's end 2018, the Briscoe Brothers stole a fan's Pride Flag and used it as a weapon in a match in Fight Club Pro in Manchester, a very LGBT-friendly city. The Briscoes already not helped by an infamous tweet where Jay "in character" had threatened to shoot anyone who told his son gay marriage was OK, the company changed the plans of the tournament they were booked in, jobbed them out in short order at the next event and implied they wouldn't be back. The Briscoes (by this point the Tag Team Champions in Ring of Honor) have since openly apologised for their homophobia and consider their actions an Old Shame, but the issue arose again in 2022 when WarnerMedia reportedly vetoed a possible appearance by them on AEW Dynamite due to their reputation. It wouldn't be until 2023 after Jay's untimely passing along with fan backlash after it was revealed that the tribute show to Jay would not be allowed to air on TBS that they would be acknowledged, with Mark becoming a member of the AEW roster in February.
• Josh Bodom was fired from Revolution Pro Wrestling and blackballed into retirement after he legitimately attacked a referee when his teammate Sha Samuels forgot to kick out of a pin in the middle of the match, despite them being booked to lose anyway, which was bad enough that the referee had to retire and also take time off from his day job. Sha Samuels narrowly avoided the same fate for starting the attack with an unplanned but still worked slam, getting off with a final warning.
• Pro Wrestling Eve co-owner Emily Read stepped down from her duties in March 2020 after a horribly worded response to a fan asking about who would be allowed into a women-only show seemed to imply she considered trans women and assigned male at birth non-binary people to be potential sex offenders. This, and people bringing up that she hadn't supported Pollyanna during the above incident (with Polly breaking her usual policy of no longer getting involved in wrestling drama to confirm her story and call Emily a fake feminist) also briefly got her and her husband Dann to delete their Twitter accounts.
• Inverted with Celtic Championship Wrestling owner Lee Cahalane, whose entire roster walked out on him in 2018 after multiple accusations of abuse, homophobic behavior, misogynistic treatment towards women and two attempted sexual assaults to Raven Creed (who affirms that the second happened after she'd had her drink spiked and was barely conscious).

Japan

All Japan Pro Wrestling

• Apollo Sugawara and Ryuma Go, two wrestlers with difficult reputations, were fired from All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1986 under unclear circumstances. According to Sugawara's tag team partner Goro Tsurumi, during a dinner with AJPW chairman Giant Baba, Sugawara and Go offended Baba with some criticisms about the company's wrestling style. Sugawara later denied this ever happened, claiming that he'd never been high enough in the company ranks to actually have dinner with Baba. In any case, Go returned to AJPW, while Sugawara became a free agent.
• Wrestler and occasional booker NOSAWA Rongai was suspended by All Japan Pro Wrestling in 2010 when he got so drunk before a match that they had to cancel it. The next year, however, he got drunk again, and this time he attacked a taxi driver, stole his car, and drove it through Sendai without a license. The incident got him fired from AJPW and blacklisted by New Japan Pro-Wrestling, in which he was going to have a match that night, and the resultant hit to his reputation no doubt "helped" the later Sugi affair.
• The same year, AJPW fired TARU as well after he confessed having fought Super Hate backstage just before the latter fainted on the ring and was diagnosed with an acute subdural hematoma. Apparently, the thing started when TARU, Hate's stablemaster, decided to reprimand him for slacking off, drinking too much, and setting a bad example for younger wrestlers (and those accusations weren't baseless, as it was known that Hate had actually wrestled at least one previous match while dangerously inebriated). However, the discussion eventually turned into a fight, and TARU, a real-life martial artist, savagely beat Hate down in front of the rest of the stable until referee Kyohei Wada stopped it. This might have ended as yet another puroresu shenanigan, but it happened that Hate had been hospitalized a week earlier by a chair shot to the head given by Kenzo Suzuki, so the beatdown and his own refusal to take time to heal only accelerated things, and caused the subdural hematoma. TARU was fired and fined for the incident, and the scandal also took with it his entire stable storyline and the role of Keiji Mutoh as AJPW's president. Later TARU made amends with Hate when he recovered, but Hate is still to be cleared out for his return to the rings, while TARU remains barred from wrestling in AJPW (he did two special appearances in 2015, the first one being in Giant Baba's anniversary event, but management apparently had to be pressed to include him).

New Japan Pro-Wrestling

• Kokichi Endo, a true veteran of the business, was removed from his job as New Japan's referee due to an incident in the 1976 bout between Antonio Inoki and judo champion Willem Ruska. After losing to Inoki, and presumably still in-character, Ruska vented his rage by attacking the referee and trying to throw him down. However, as this wasn't in the script, and likely acting on instinct, Endo (himself a superb judoka, having trained under Masahiko Kimura of all people) resisted the throw and pushed Ruska away instead of playing along, therefore accidentally making the vaunted judo champion look awful in front of everybody.
• Akira Maeda quit New Japan after a November 19, 1987 six-man tag match, where he broke Riki Choshu's orbital bone with a shoot kick. Maeda and Choshu were enemies in real life at the time and took that heat out in the aforementioned match, where Riki no-sold Maeda's blows even before the kick. Management suspended Maeda and tried to punish him by sending him to Mexico to learn lucha libre, which was humiliating for a shoot-style wrestler, but Maeda quit himself with his entire group (it was even rumored that Maeda's group was already planning on leaving, and he only attacked Choshu as a spiteful parting gift). Maeda and the match's referee have claimed the kick was a botched spot and not a deliberate attempt to injury Choshu, but the heat was clearly there.
• History repeated in 2005, as Masayuki Naruse, not coincidentally an apprentice to Maeda, was rumored to be frustrated with his booking in New Japan, and ultimately left the promotion two months after a match in which he injured Yujiro Takahashi with stiff strikes. Like Maeda, it's unclear whether his contract was not renewed as a consequence of the incident or he was already leaving and just capitalized on the chance to finish some business with Takahashi.
• In 2012, Low Ki told the New Japan office that he did not want to wrestle at an upcoming event in Fukushima because of health and safety reasons stemming from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. He wrestled at Wrestle Kingdom 7 dressed as Agent 47 in protest without clearing it with them first. They were so furious with him^note Their main objection seems to have been the prop gun he was carrying, guns are a lot more taboo in Japan than they are in the States, and even the police rarely carry them. Doing that in front of a lot of high-profile sponsors without clearing it with your bosses first is a big no-no. over that to the point that even years later, the company was said to be open to bringing anyone back "with the exception of Low Ki".
• Matt Sydal was busted entering Japan with marijuana stashed in his luggage in Mid 2016, Japan's strict drug laws caused NJPW to break ties with him immediately, which was a blow to them as Sydal was a third of the NEVER Openweight Six-man Tag Team Champions alongside Satoshi Kojima and Ricochet, forcing them to vacate the belts. The team eventually reformed and won the titles back with Sydal's place being taken by David Finlay Jr. (son of Irish 90's WCW mainstay David "Fit" Finlay). After he was charged with possession on September 29, 2016, Sydal very publicly announced he was done with NJPW.

Pro Wrestling NOAH

• NOAH had to demote Big Van Vader from his big star position due to his notorious alcoholism. They were initially willing to overlook that he was neglecting his hygiene and working unsafely in the ring, but when he had a drunk breakdown in a hotel room and committed self-harm with a knife, the company was fed up and stopped booking him as soon as possible.
• Jun Izumida, despite his merry visage and comedic wrestling style, was reportedly a bitter, irritable worker who never got over his frustration at not being pushed higher (and not finding a wife). His backstage behavior got him fired from the promotion in 2009, but three years later he got his revenge by publishing a book exposing all the injustices, mismanagements and yakuza connections he had found in NOAH. As a result, two of the promotion's executives, Ryu Nakata and Haruka Eigen, were publicly demoted in an attempt to save face — which was still not enough to save NOAH's TV deal. After Izumida died in 2017, he was basically erased from the company's history.
• Although NOAH founder Mitsuharu Misawa reportedly had great plans for him, Masahito Kakihara quit Pro Wrestling NOAH after their very first show, where he legitimately attacked Takao Omori during a six-man tag match, sick of Omori's stiffing him out back when they all worked in AJPW. As Kakihara seemed to avoid being involved with NOAH wrestlers during his next venture in NJPW, it was speculated for many years that the attack had gotten him blacklisted by Misawa too; this was proven untrue, as Kakihara remained on good terms with Misawa.
• Speaking of Takao Omori (known out of Japan for having been in the 1996 Royal Rumble), he already had a reputation for unprofessionalism and a Hair-Trigger Temper. Aside from the mentioned incident with Kakihara, the final straw was when he crashed a very high-profile match with Shinya Hashimoto at NOAH's Great Voyage 2000, after which Mitsuharu Misawa became sick of Omori ruining his pet projects, released him from his contract, and publicly declared to the press that he would make sure Omori never wrestled in NOAH again.
• Michael Elgin's #SpeakingOut accusations didn't stop his wrestling career enough and he found refuge in NOAH in 2022, but alas, he hit a new low when he got arrested by the Japanese police for stealing protein food.

Dragon Gate

• The entire Aagan Iisou stable was shockingly fired from Dragon Gate at the peak of its popularity in late 2004, with "behavioral problems" given as the only official reason.
  
  Several stories circulated surrounding the firing. It's been claimed that Aagan Iisou member Brother YASSHI unwittingly offended an executive of Dragon Gate sponsor Gaora TV at the promotion's end-of-year party, which endangered DG's TV deal and infuriated the promotion's management; that several members bullied Naoki Tanizaki, the lowest-ranked DG wrestler, to vent frustration over their booking; and that the group resigned together to cash in on their popularity in another promotion, with the firing story being a cover-up to avoid the embarrassment of letting go of their hottest faction. Interestingly, none of these rumors contradict each other.
  
  As an aside, when Aagan Iisou's firing was announced, Dragon Gate execs called out CIMA, Masaaki Mochizuki, and Magnum TOKYO by name and threatened to fire them too if "certain aspects" of their behavior were not improved. Dragon Gate (and Toryumon before it) had a serious issue with backstage hazing, so firing Aagan Iisou could also have been a warning for the entire promotion.
• During Dragon Gate's 2016 New Year's address, in which the wrestlers thanked fans for their support, Kenichiro Arai cut an unexpectedly dour promo where he complained about his sparse booking in DG events and claimed he was tired of having to wrestle elsewhere. Although Arai remained signed with DG, he went almost three years without being booked there (and when he started showing up again in June 2019, his appearances were no more frequent than before the promo), leading people to think his promo had irritated DG executives and led them to punish him by worsening his situation.

Multiple promotions

• Koji Kitao:
  • While being trained in New Japan Pro-Wrestling by Apollo Sugawara (already not a good influence), Kitao was fired from the company for insulting the half-Korean Riki Choshu with an anti-Korean slur after the latter criticized his shoddy in-ring work. This was acknowledged as an overreaction by the company, since other wrestlers at the time routinely got away with even worse things; however, New Japan had already lost interest in him as a prospect because he was so difficult to work with, and Choshu had enough connections to seal Kitao's firing.
  • In 1991, Kitao was eventually booked to job to Earthquake at SWS Wrestle Dream, a joint show between Super World of Sports and the World Wrestling Federation. Kitao, a former grand sumo champion, refused to work with a wrestler from a lower sumo background.^note Before this, Kitao already had a reputation as a terrible sumo yokozuna: he was promoted without winning any tournaments at ōzeki level and was forced to retire after embarrassing the sport with several violent incidents. He no-sold all of Earthquake's moves, and after being disqualified for kicking the referee, Kitao grabbed a mic and made an unscripted, angry speech insulting Earthquake to the audience. Earthquake had actually been advised to provoke Kitao by SWS booker The Great Kabuki, who wanted an excuse to fire Kitao for his unruly backstage behavior. It worked all too well: Kitao and Kabuki lost their jobs, and SWS went under the following year.

Other promotions

• In May 2018, Ayako Hamada's contract with WAVE was terminated and she vacated the Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling World Title belt after being arrested by police for being under the effect of snorted kakuseizai (a stimulant drug, similar to methamphetamine).
• Shinobu Kandori, a judo medalist turned joshi wrestler, walked out of Japan Women's Pro Wrestling in 1987 over a legitimate feud with Jackie Sato. After a match where Sato legitimately injured Kandori's eye, Kandori criticized her as a sloppy worker; in retaliation, Sato intentionally shot her on July 6 by attacking her still-healing eye. The JWP board did not punish Sato for this nor listened to Kandori's demands not to put them together in the ring again, and on their next match on July 18, Kandori gave Sato a Career-Ending Injury in retaliation for the whole thing. While she quit JWP voluntarily, Kandori was essentially blacklisted for the incident and took years to return to wrestling full-time.
• Junior mainstay Koji Kanemoto, already infamous for having the penchant to brutalize people in the ring and being a perpetual Karma Houdini about it, was fired and blacklisted from WRESTLE-1 in 2014 when he got into a fight with a fan after a match, causing a brawl that ended with the cops being called. According to Kanemoto, the fan became angry and attacked Koji when the latter didn't want to sign an autograph for him.
• In April of 2017 La Rosa Negra lost her spot in World Wonder Ring STARDOM's annual Cinderella Tournament, and STARDOM altogether, for getting into a fight in an apartment with Tessa Blanchard.
• Famed indy high-flyer Takuya Sugi had his career halted in 2012 after taking part in the NOSAWA drug scandal, in which he planted marijuana in NOSAWA Rongai's baggage to get him in jail in exchange for a full-time contract with Mexican promotion AAA. This was a particularly ugly example in the list, not only due to its nasty nature, but also because Sugi himself was the one who revealed his own role in the incident out of guilt, and not any less because the AAA executive who proposed him the treat, Masahiro Hayashi, went seemingly unpunished for his part (fellow AAA wrestler Konnan would even claim that Sugi was all but blackmailed by Hayashi to execute the plan). Sugi would return to the ring in Japan, but it wouldn't be until three years later that he didn't use very covert identities while doing so, and he didn't seem to have a full-fledged return until 2017.
• According to Minoru Suzuki, he was fired from Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi for getting in a verbal spar with Yoshiaki Fujiwara during a meeting. After his friend Masakatsu Funaki and several other wrestlers left the promotion, Suzuki joined them and found Pancrase as he and Funaki had been planning for a time.
• In November 2018, TAKA Michinoku was sacked from Kaientai Dojo, the promotion he had founded and directed since 2002 after it was revealed he had an extramarital affair that lasted eight years. In the wake of this, they renamed themselves Active Advance Pro Wrestling and changed the color scheme to distance themselves from their founder.
• Yoshiko was suspended indefinitely from World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM for going into business for herself and attacking Act Yasukawa for real during their Feb. 22, 2015 match, beating Yasukawa to a bloody pulp, breaking her nose, cheek, and orbital bone around her surgically repaired eye, forcing her to retire from the in-ring action shortly thereafter. The incident's effects weren't as fulminant as expected, though: Yasukawa made a brief return to help STARDOM's first USA tour and pass the torch to Kairi Hojo, while Yoshiko was admitted in Nanae Takahashi's SEAdLINNNG promotion shortly after and also had a brief Mixed Martial Arts career capitalizing on her reputation.

Mexico and Puerto Rico

• CMLL stripped Reina Jubuki of its World Women's title in 1995 after she used their willingness to let her compete elsewhere without her mask to fill two slots in the WCW Monday Nitro Women's title tournament with the Jubuki gimmick and as Akira Hokuto. Worse for Hokuto, WCW didn't have nearly as much interest as CMLL in actually doing anything with its women's title. (An alternate view is that CMLL was more displeased with WCW's AAA deal than anything Hokuto did herself)
• La Tigresa's five-year reign as WWC women's champion ended in 1998 after she was arrested for trying to smuggle heroin into the Puerto Rico State Penitentiary.
• Juventud Guerrera was fired from WWE apparently because dancing on a car while high in 2006 was bad for their publicity and by AAA in 2009 after getting in a locker room fight when he found someone had taken a dump in his bag^note Guerrera insists it was Konnan while Konnan blamed Sean Waltman, but thought it was funny either way. AAA did take him back though, because it was easy to understand why he did so.
• Dr. Wagner Jr and L.A. Park were fired by CMLL after their 75th Anniversary show in September of 2008 for going overboard during their match, though Wagner claimed it was due to him criticizing CMLL in the press and lead a 200 man protest march for everyone who felt mistreated by their bosses. Seven years later, both were advertised for CMLL's 82nd Anniversary show in September of 2015 and were an important part of the build-up to it but L.A. Park ended up being removed from the card and fired after using what CMLL deemed excessive profanity during a promo which consisted of him insulting the arena Mexico fans (such blatant Cheap Heat on their property is against CMLL's policy).
• In May 2017, Máximo Sexy, La Máscara, and Robin were kicked out of CMLL for trashing Ultimo Guerrero's car alongside Psycho Clown on video — because, as members of the Alvarado wrestling family, they took offense to Guerrero saying that the head of the wrestler's union should be decided by vote and not passed down the Alvarado family, right after the death of previous head Brazo de Oro.
• In 2017, AAA stripped Reina de Reinas Champion Taya Valkyrie of her title belt for not showing up to defend it on a show she hadn't been scheduled to appear on.^note The Kayfabe reasoning for this was that she'd used a weapon during her last defense, except it was a no disqualification match. This led to her real-life and on-screen fiancee Johnny Mundo storming out in protest after being tricked into handing them her belt "for a photoshoot". Although AAA continued to keep putting him on shows, it was over a year before AAA booked Valkyrie again, her seeming disinterest in returning possibly being a factor, and over two years before she was in the title picture again.
• Sexy Star:
  • Star was blacklisted from several promotions after intentionally injuring Rosemary with a legitimate armbar at AAA's Triplemania XXV. She was stripped of the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship, but refused to apologize and even blamed Rosemary for the incident.
  • After Star hung up her mask and started working smaller promotions as Dulce Poly, she started another shoot fight with Diosa Quetzal at an MDA Lucha Libre show^note A video showed Diosa "starting" the fight with a slightly stiff kick, but eyewitnesses claimed Diosa had retaliated against Dulce for no-selling her moves all match., so she won't be allowed near any major promotions so soon. The Sexy Star character reappeared in AAA in 2021, but now portrayed by a different wrestler previously known as La Hija de Gatúbela.

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