When a superstar player gets traded or signs with a new team in any sport it’s usually big news; it’s no different in the world of professional wrestling. Wrestlers move on to different companies after being released or when their contract expires on a regular basis, and everytime the wrestling media goes wild with speculation as to what the reasoning was. In 1992 then World Champion Ric Flair left World Championship Wrestling (WCW) after a disagreement with company President Jim Herd, and took the Championship belt with him to WWE in an act of defiance. This incident was mirrored in 1995 when then WWE Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze jumped to WCW and threw the WWE Women’s Championship into the trash live on WCW’s flagship show Nitro. In both of these cases the “dirt sheets” (a term used to describe wrestling newsletters) were a flutter with speculation if either would ever be allowed to return to the companies they left…..they both did years later. Even the face of the WWE in the 80’s Hulk Hogan was lured to WCW in 1994 and continued to portray the same All-American character until 1996 when he became the evil Hollywood Hogan and formed the New World Order with fellow WWE transplants Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. To combat this, WWE draped recent WCW defector Lex Luger in the American flag and toured him around the country in a star spangled bus in an attempt to make a Hulk Hogan 2.0. In more modern times “The Icon” of WCW, Sting, who was heralded for years as the one wrestler to have never worked for WWE, made his long rumored debut for the company to feud with Triple H in 2014. Jon Moxley, who had become dissatisfied with the direction of his Dean Ambrose character in WWE, made the decision in 2019 to jump to upstart company All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and has arguably become the face of the company. Similar to when a player who played for multiple teams gets into the Hall of Fame and it’s debated what teams they will wear on their plaque, with what company a wrestler’s legacy lies is a hot button issue. In that spirit, this week on “Issues With Wresling” join myself and an all-star panel of guests as we debate where the legacies of some of the biggest names in wrestling history should lie. Sunday 6pm CST across all I-70 Sports Media social platforms.

Photo credit: All Elite Wrestling