Cody Rhodes & 9 Other Wrestlers Who Started Their Own Promotions
Wrestlers work their entire lives, hoping to move up the ladder and take a spot at the top of WWE. However, for everyone like Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and John Cena, there are hundreds of wrestlers that never sniff that brass ring. However, some wrestlers have been able to do the next best thing.
RELATED: The 5 Best NWA Title Feuds In WCW (& 5 In TNA)
Some wrestlers have been able to save up their money or meet the right people and start their own promotions. It was here that they either made themselves the stars they always wanted to be or established the promotion to build stars that they saw languishing in WWE or other larger wrestling companies.
10 Cody Rhodes
Cody Rhodes is the most recent wrestler to start his own promotion, but it has to be said he did not do it alone. Cody joined forces with the Young Bucks to team with a billionaire in Shahid Khan to start All Elite Wrestling.
The goal was not to make Rhodes a superstar but to create a wrestling promotion that pushed the type of wrestling these men liked to watch. The end result was the biggest competitor to WWE in many years.
9 Jeff Jarrett
The last time a promotion believed it could threaten WWE was TNA Wrestling in its early days. Jeff Jarrett was part of WCW when Vince McMahon bought the company, shut it down, buried it, and turned wrestling into a monopoly.
Jarrett and his father, Jerry Jarrett, started TNA in 2002 and gave fans a genuine alternative (along with Ring of Honor, which opened the same year). Things for Jarrett went great at first, but he needed money and sold the company.
8 Tommy Dreamer
Tommy Dreamer became a star in ECW and also helped out behind the scenes there. This meant he was able to see how to run a wrestling promotion, and more importantly, learn how not to run a wrestling company.
When Dreamer left WWE, he decided to open a wrestling promotion that showed appreciation for the hardcore style he loved from ECW. In 2012, Dreamer started House of Hardcore and it has now operated for eight years, with a whos-who of talent walking through its doors.
7 Mike Quackenbush
Mike Quackenbush was a major indie star at the start of the century. He worked in Combat Zone Wrestling early in his career, but then he decided he wanted to do more. In 2002, Quackenbush started his own wrestling promotion at the age of 26, with his friend and the man who trained him, Reckless Youth (who worked in WWE until 2000).
RELATED: AEW: The 5 Best Young Stars & The 5 Best Veterans
The two opened a wrestling school called The Wrestle Factory, and from there, they opened their new promotion, which they called Chikara. The wrestling promotion was weird, dealing in comic book storylines with superheroes and mythical characters, while also dealing with time travel and more. Chikara shut down operations in 2020.
6 Shohei 'Giant' Baba
Shohei "Giant" Baba was a Japanese wrestling legend. He started his career in 1960, where he trained under Rikidozan with fellow future superstar Antonio Inoki. They worked at the JWA dojo, and in 1972, Baba chose to start his own wrestling promotion in Japan.
This was All Japan Pro Wrestling, and Baba was the top star of the company. The company worked with the NWA until the '80s. Baba served as the president until he died in 1999.
5 Fritz Von Erich
Fritz Von Erich started his career in the '50s when he went to work for Stu Hart in Canada. Hart made Fritz and Waldo Von Erich storyline brothers and made them evil Germans. Von Erich won the AWA World title and then moved on to the NWA.
Von Erich became a promoter in Texas. In 1966, he bought out Big Time Wrestling, building it into the mega-successful World Class Championship Wrestling, where his sons were the top stars in the company. The company went under after Von Erich sold it in 1989.
4 Verne Gagne
Verne Gagne started his wrestling career in 1949 when he worked in the NWA. He won several titles before he decided that he was ready to leave the promotion. This happened when several promotions disagreed on a decision to have Edouard Carpentier beat Lou Thesz for the NWA world title.
RELATED: 10 Wrestlers Who Were Great In One Faction & Awful In Another
The two men each defended their titles, and when Verne Gagne beat Carpentier, he held the title that many promotions refused to recognize. Gagne lost the title and decided to start his own promotion. This was the AWA and was one of the Big 3 wrestling promotions of the '70s and '80s with WWE and NWA. The AWA even got its show on ESPN.
3 Cowboy Bill Watts
Cowboy Bill Watts was a professional wrestler who worked in the '60s and '70s. He was best known for his feud with WWE Champion Bruno Sammartino in the '60s and wrestled across America and Japan.
However, in 1979, Watts began the most successful era of his career when he started his own promotion called Mid-South Wrestling. The company was the most prosperous territory in the NWA, but it eventually made the mistake of trying to go national as the UWF. Ultimately, Watts sold the promotion to Jim Crockett.
2 Jerry Jarrett
Jerry Jarrett arguably started two different wrestling promotions in his life. After working as a referee in the '60s, he started wrestling in 1965 and had a short career working in other NWA territories, enjoying most of his success as a tag team wrestler.
In 1977, Jarrett opened his own wrestling promotion called the Continental Wrestling Association. This was the successful Memphis promotion that made Jerry Lawler a star. In 2002, Jarrett helped his son Jeff start TNA Wrestling.
1 Antonio Inoki
In 1972, Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba were the top stars in the JWA. However, that was the year that Baba left to start All Japan Pro Wrestling, and JWA fired Inoki for his role in an attempted takeover.
Inoki followed Baba's footsteps and created his own promotion as well. Inoki founded New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1972 and guided it to the top, as the NJPW became the most prestigious wrestling promotion in Japan. Inoki sold his ownership to Yuke's in 2005.
