Professional wrestling legend and former WWE Intercontinental Champion Ken Shamrock who is also a former WWE Tag Team Champion recently looked back at joining WWE after leaving the UFC and revealed that he was called a sell out after making this decision.
Ken Shamrock was introduced to the larger WWE audience at WrestleMania 13 when he was given the role of the referee during the Epic submission match between “The Hitman” Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The fans were still unaware of the fact that WWE was pushing to sign him as a full time wrestler for the promotion.
Ken Shamrock Reveals The Reaction When He Left UFC To Join WWE
Before joining WWE, Shamrock was a big name in the UFC and he had an amazing record in the mixed martial arts background. In WWE he was built as the “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” and from the very first day of signing his professional contract with WWE, he had been treated as an upper mid card star.
WWE had big plans for the mixed martial arts star as they gave them some of the biggest honours of the time like WWE intercontinental championship, he also won the WWE Tag Team Championship when he was a member of the Authority, and in 1998 he won the WWE King of the Ring tournament which was a big accomplishment back then.
But his WWE career was cut short when he was released from the promotion in 1999. His professional wrestling career could not go further after his WWE release in 1999. He tried his luck on various independent circuit promotions and also on TNA Wrestling but he could never have got the ultimate success. He was not seen in any professional wrestling promotion after 2022.
Ken Shamrock who is also a former WWE Tag Team Champion recently spoke to Giancarlo Aulino from Sportskeeda MMA where he looked back at joining WWE after leaving the UFC and revealed that he was called a sell out after making this decision. He said;
“Not only did some of the fans turn on me but some of guys in the Lion’s Den, after everything that I did and gave them a career – obviously they earned it no question – but some of them turned on me and didn’t understand why I was doing this. Because they were feeling the heat being a part of the Lion’s Den that I was going into something that was ‘fake’ and it wasn’t real and I was a sell-out. So I had to eat it.
“I had to listen to all that stuff. And you know, I think a lot of these people that are crossing over and doing it now, they should be thankful that they’re not the first ones to have to do it because it wasn’t a pretty sight for me…All those people that followed me, half of them turned on me. And of course, being in that realm of being this celebrity in fighting and people turning on you, it’s not fun.
“You hear a lot of things there’s nothing you could do about it. But you know, being successful heals everything. We were able to turn wrestling into something that people could be proud to watch. It became this Attitude Era and people started to think it was cool and pretty soon it blew up. And thank goodness because it could’ve turned out much differently and I could’ve got squashed…I thought I was able to be very successful in wrestling even though I that there was a lot more we could’ve done. Unfortunately it didn’t happen, but I felt like I represented wrestling well and I represented the MMA world well.”
H/T – WrestlingHeadlines