Being knowledgeable wrestler is a dream job for loads of people. You get to travel all over the world to cities and countries some could only dream of, if all goes well you possibly can find yourself being an inspirational figure for individuals who need someone to look as much as, and when you land a job in an organization like WWE or All Elite Wrestling, you possibly can easily change into a millionaire very quickly in any respect.
For a lot of top WWE Superstars, being in a wrestling ring is all they’ve ever desired to do, to the purpose where a lot of them will simply say “I do not know” when met with the query “what would you be doing when you weren’t knowledgeable wrestler?” Nevertheless, there are some very famous names who did have an everyday job before they were bitten by the wrestling bug. While some individuals are born into the industry, just have a look at anyone with Hart, Rhodes, or McMahon as their surname, but others needed to have a job happening the side to support their early years of coaching, and even the primary few years of their profession as working on the independent scene wasn’t enough for them to get by on a week-to-week basis.
That’s what we’re here to speak about today, the mundane, 9-to-5 careers that a number of the biggest names within the wrestling business had before the intense lights of WWE took them to latest heights. While there’s nothing improper with any of the professions we’re about to list as they most actually deliver living for people all around the world, the concept of a few of WWE’s biggest names working in these jobs ought to be a reminder that anyone can achieve their dreams in the event that they work hard enough.
AJ Styles – Water Delivery Man
“The Phenomenal” AJ Styles knows that he’s nearing the top of his wrestling profession, stating recently that he would love to be officially done with wrestling by the point he turns 50. Styles has got to where he’s in wrestling not only because he can do things within the ring that other wrestlers couldn’t execute in 1,000 attempts, but in addition because he made some very big decisions in his first few years within the business that turned out to be the precise moves in the long run, despite not seeming prefer it on the time.
Certainly one of those decisions was turning down the chance to sign a developmental contract with WWE in 2002 as Styles wasn’t comfortable moving his to Cincinnati, Ohio along with his wife as she was about to complete her studies in school in order that she could change into a teacher. On top of that reason, Styles was offered $500 per week by WWE, roughly the identical amount of cash he would get from his job as a water delivery man.
Styles has opened up about his water job prior to now, stating that it was actually the proper job for him when he began wrestling because it allowed him to coach for less expensive. Moderately than paying with money, which he did not have, Styles would bring water, which he had almost an excessive amount of of, to his trainers for them and the remainder of the athletes. This water delivery job was also the rationale why Styles turned down the prospect to work for WCW as they were also offering $500 per week to sign a developmental cope with them in 2000, though he would sign a contract with WCW afterward, just for the corporate to be bought out in 2001.
Becky Lynch – Flight Attendant
History was made in 2019 when Becky Lynch ended WrestleMania 35 with each the WWE Raw and WWE SmackDown Women’s Championships lifted high above her head. “The Man” became the primary woman in history to win a WrestleMania important event, something that gave the look of an not possible dream just a couple of years earlier as Lynch had actually retired from wrestling just 4 years into her profession.
In 2006, Lynch suffered a serious head injury during a match in Dortmund, Germany, forcing her into an impromptu retirement consequently, and while she would make sporadic appearances on the UK independent scene between 2006 and 2013, Lynch would take up quite a few different jobs. Of the roles Lynch had, the one she saw as probably the most serious was her role as a flight attendant for Irish airline Aer Lingus. Lynch explained in an interview back in 2017 that working as a flight attendant gave her the work ethic and discipline to be on time for all the pieces, mainly because if she wasn’t on time for work the plane would literally take off without her.
On top of traveling the skies with one in all Ireland’s most well-known airlines, Lynch would eventually move to the US on a everlasting basis where she would change into a waitress in an Irish pub in Manhattan, Latest York, a job Lynch knew she wasn’t excellent at but she got by enough to make ends meet and eventually try her hand at acting. It was through her desire to change into an actress that she ended up training at a gym in Chicago for stunt work on the show “Vikings,” but she was encouraged to check out for WWE attributable to her wrestling background, and the remainder, as they are saying, is history.
John Cena – Limo Driver
Until very recently, many individuals would have loved to have been chauffeured around in a limousine by John Cena, but after he turned heel on the 2025 Elimination Chamber, it’s protected to say that nobody would trust themselves moving into any type of vehicle with the person formerly often known as the Doctor of Thuganomics.
Long before he was important eventing WrestleMania’s and kicking Cody Rhodes within the groin, Cena actually pursued a profession in bodybuilding as he idolized WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan growing up. Given Hogan’s physique during his prime years, plus the indisputable fact that he was from California, Cena moved to the west coast to spice up his probabilities of becoming a bodybuilder, but he would ultimately find yourself gravitating towards skilled wrestling on the turn of the of millennium. Before he moved to California, Cena landed himself a job as a limo driver in Boston in an effort to get by amongst other jobs, but in line with Cena himself, he wasn’t great on the job.
In an interview with Bloomberg in 2021, Cena revealed that he was terrible at being a limo driver and that he was late to his first job. Everyone has probably been late to their very own job no less than once of their lives, but Cena’s limo arrived to its destination three hours after it was alleged to because he got lost. The ironic part about Cena getting lost on his first day as a limo driver is the indisputable fact that on the time, he was literally living in his automobile because he was that poor, meaning that he would spend almost his entire time on the road attributable to lack of funds. Cena now rides as a passenger in most limousines, and he’s probably very completely satisfied about that.
Liv Morgan – Hooters Girl
Hooters has been around for over 40 years, and as of 2025 has over 430 restaurants all over the world. Hundreds of ladies have passed through the famous restaurant as waitresses and bartenders, including former WWE Women’s World Champion Liv Morgan, with Hooters inadvertently being a part of the rationale why Morgan is in WWE today.
Morgan’s journey from working at Hooters to championship glory got here through the previous manager of the particular Hooters restaurant she worked at, who just so happened to be a WWE Superstar on the time. Morgan explained in an interview in 2024 that the present manager on the time would let the WWE Superstar find out about Morgan and the way much of a fan of the business she was, leading Morgan to be put in touch with legendary strength and conditioning coach Joe DeFranco, who has also worked with Triple H. She would secure a spot at a WWE try-out event in 2014, and was signed to the corporate later that very same yr. While Morgan is flying high in WWE, the Hooters brand has struggled lately, and in February 2025, the corporate officially filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The previous WWE Women’s World Champion didn’t wish to reveal the name of the WWE Superstar who used to administer the Hooters she worked at in her 2024 interview, however the unnamed star is none apart from Enzo Amore, who confirmed that he used to administer a Hooters restaurant on social media. Morgan and Amore would date for a transient time after she had been signed to the corporate, with Amore already being a member of the roster, however the two would break up after Morgan accused Amore of cheating on her, hence why she didn’t want to provide his name any exposure.
Luke Harper – Librarian
Jon Huber, higher known to WWE fans as Luke Harper, and to All Elite Wrestling fans as Mr. Brodie Lee, passed away in December 2020 just ten days after his forty first birthday. It was a death that shook the wrestling world to its core, and his memory still lives on in each firms as his wife Amanda repeatedly works with AEW, and his son can consider Cody Rhodes an in depth friend of his. On top of being one of the crucial celebrated big men of his generation, Huber also had one in all the strangest pre-wrestling jobs out of everyone; a grade school librarian.
Huber told the story of how he worked at a faculty as a librarian before, and through his wrestling profession, on an episode of Chris Jericho’s “Talk is Jericho” podcast. On account of the indisputable fact that he would only work independent dates on the time, Huber was capable of balance his day job along with his skilled wrestling profession before making wrestling a full-time gig. Nevertheless, there have been days where he would get some weird looks from students and other staff members as he would show as much as work with bumps, bruises, and in September 2008, stitches in his head after working with Claudio Castagnoli in a bloody and violent steel cage match for the CHIKARA promotion.
Fortunately, Huber was capable of cover up the stitches by wearing a hat to work that day, but as his profession in wrestling began to grow, he would wear those scars proudly as his work in places like CHIKARA and Dragon Gate USA would earn him a WWE contract in 2012. He could be a preferred WWE Superstar for eight years before departing within the spring of 2020 to change into the leader of The Dark Order in AEW.
Roman Reigns – Officer Furniture Installer
Long before people acknowledged him because the Head of the Table, before he was ever near becoming The Tribal Chief, and even before he walked around claiming he was “The Big Dog,” Roman Reigns had a standard job like everyone else.
Originally, Reigns had eyed up a profession as a football player after a successful run as a defensive tackle in highschool, resulting in him being signed by the Minnesota Vikings in 2007 after going undrafted in that yr’s NFL draft. He would later be signed by the Jacksonville Jaguars for one week (yes, one week), before traveling to the Canadian Football League’s Edmonton Eskimos in 2008, but was released at the top of the yr and left football behind.
Reigns would not sign with WWE until 2010, meaning that in 2009, he would simply install office furniture for his sister’s business as a technique to make a living. This was the identical company that each Jimmy and Jey Uso worked for before their uncle, former WWE Superstar Umaga, landed them jobs in WWE. As you possibly can imagine, Reigns hated his job, despite being involved in a family business, stating in an interview with ESPN that he knew he wasn’t meant to be wearing a furniture shirt daily and that the world has something on the market for him, he just didn’t know what it was.
Nevertheless, he did say that the rationale he took the job was because he had recently change into a father and knew he needed to supply some type of income now that his football dreams were over. Reigns is now one in all the best paid wrestlers on this planet, and in 2024, he surpassed Hulk Hogan for having probably the most WrestleMania important events in WWE history with nine.
Sheamus – IT Consultant and Bodyguard
Sheamus is one in all the longest serving wrestlers on the WWE roster on the time of writing as he has officially been with the corporate for 18 years. Given his striking look, many individuals won’t have the ability to assume The Celtic Warrior in every other career, but he did have two wildly different jobs before he became a full-time wrestler.
The primary, and the more mundane of the 2 was working as an IT consultant. While the corporate he worked for is comparatively unknown, Sheamus worked as an in-house consultant helping the corporate improve their technology and solved quite a few problems with their computers and IT systems.
The opposite job, and the one which is much more exciting was working as a bodyguard and bouncer for Lillie’s Bordello nightclub in Dublin, Ireland. The rationale why that is the more exciting of the 2 jobs is not only because he needed to stop a whole bunch of drunk people from making even larger fools of themselves, but due to one very famous individual who was a frequent visitor of Lillie’s Bordello. That individual was none apart from U2 singer Bono. Sheamus has clarified that he wasn’t specifically hired to be a part of Bono’s personal security and was simply an worker of the nightclub itself, but a part of his job description was to be sure that the rock star, in his words, “didn’t get his head wrecked” by individuals with an excessive amount of Guinness of their system asking for autographs.
Once his days as a bouncer were over, Sheamus would move to England to pursue his wrestling dreams properly, and to make things come full circle for him, his first appearance on WWE TV got here as a security guard, where he was laid out by Triple H.
Sin Cara – Funeral Home
To avoid any confusion, the person many individuals know today as Mistico in CMLL shouldn’t be the version of Sin Cara this entry is about. That is concerning the second version of Sin Cara who originally wrestled in WWE as Hunico, who would adopt the Sin Cara gimmick after Mistico left the corporate to return to Mexico. With all that said, the last place anyone would expect Sin Cara to have worked before becoming a wrestler could be a funeral home, if anything most individuals would predict someone like The Undertaker to have had that job, and even someone like Paul Bearer.
During a 2019 interview, Sin Cara was asked what profession he would have gone into had the dream of being knowledgeable wrestler not worked out for him, and to everyone’s surprise, he said he would have change into a funeral director or an embalmer, arguably the 2 jobs furthest away from being a luchador. Nevertheless, the rationale behind that is that’s the business his family is in, and that he worked within the funeral home his family ran as a young person. This might sound like an intimidating job for somebody so young, but attributable to it being a family business, Sin Cara not only admitted to it feeling normal, but even revealing that he and his young members of the family would play hide and seek within the caskets.
Now wrestling under the name Cinta de Oro, the 47 yr old primarily wrestles in Mexico for various independent promotions, and despite his family history, he has yet to come across any casket, or buried alive matches since his WWE release in 2019. Nevertheless, if he was to ever have one in all those bouts, Sin Cara would no less than know where to get good quality caskets.
The Great Khali – Police Officer
Picture this. You reside in India and you have just broken the law. The police are hot in your tail as you are attempting to avoid getting arrested, however it’s no use and also you’re cornered with nowhere to go. Nevertheless, you’re thinking that that when you put up enough fight you would possibly just have the ability to flee without facing jail time. Then, you see that one in all the law enforcement officials is over seven feet tall, has hands the scale of your rib cage, and appears just like the last person on earth you’d ever pick a fight with. That’s what some people in India needed to cope with within the Nineteen Nineties as WWE Hall of Famer The Great Khali served as a police officer before he was a wrestler.
On account of his Acromegaly diagnosis as a baby, Khali would grow as much as be an enormous of human being to the purpose where he was picked on school. Nevertheless, his size would find yourself being a blessing to an extent as he dropped out of faculty and landed a job as a security guard for a wealthy Indian businessman. His work as a guard led to him joining the Punjabi Police Force, where he would find yourself having a really respectable profession as an enforcer of the law, in any case, who would ever disobey someone who looked like Khali.
His job would play a consider Khali becoming a wrestler as his schedule allowed him to go to the local gyms regularly to work on his physique, and thru his workouts, Khali would set his sights on becoming knowledgeable wrestler, and decided to quit his job within the police force in order that he could move to the US pursue his dream.
