They were beauties, giants, and sometimes porn stars in the ring, but when these wrestling stars
hit retirement, they left their personas behind. And these days, you wouldn't even recognize them.
From 2006 to 2011, WWE fans got to know Russian bruiser Vladimir Kozlov very well. He started as
a super-stoic monster, then evolved into a wacky, fun-loving big man, prone to dancing, tea parties,
and tooting on invisible trombones with his tag partner, the equally wacky Santino Marella.
Since leaving the ring, Kozlov, whose real name is Oleg Prudius,
has slimmed his body but jacked up his muscles. He's also grown a big,
bushy beard that bears something of a resemblance to Hugh Jackman.
For those of you wondering why he would spend his retirement getting into better shape than
he was in while wrestling, the answer is that he's now looking to make it in Hollywood as an
action-movie star. In that regard, he's making some good progress, appearing in
popular action franchises like John Wick and Fast and Furious as both a stunt performer and actor.
Even before his WWE debut, he'd appeared in a small role on The Wire, and he's since acted
in TV shows and films such as Burn Notice, and the Chinese mega-smash Wolf Warrior II.
He even founded a production company in 2014 called Quasar Entertainment, where
he currently serves as vice president. And now that Jackman is done with Wolverine, it doesn't
seem out of the question to see him join up with a major team like X-Men down the line, either.
Between WCW and WWF, Debrah Miceli was an undisputed pioneer. As Madusa in WCW,
she proved women could both look beautiful and fight every bit as hard as men. As Alundra Blayze,
she spearheaded the new WWF Women's division and gave us classic matches
with Japanese sensations like Bull Nakano, Aja Kong, Luna Vachon, and Monster Ripper.
But after rejoining WCW in 1995 and throwing the WWF Women's Championship belt in the trash on live
TV, she became persona non grata to Vince McMahon and company. Once WCW became WWF property in 2001,
Madusa elected to retire rather than deal with the backlash from her former organization.
Since then, Miceli has become a tattooed Renaissance woman. She got into monster
trucks and quickly turned into a champion driver, winning international contests in
her truck and even serving as vice president of her own monster truck league for a year.
In addition, she opened up a pet spa and doggie bakery and serves as commissioner
of a Japanese women's wrestling promotion called World Wonder Ring Stardom. She might
not look like she did in the ring, but she's clearly as successful and driven as ever.
"With really good friends around I really believe you are a product of
what you keep around you. Your people, your environment, your choices in life."
As the "slightly off-center" half of the Steiner Brothers, Rick Steiner quickly endeared himself to
fans in both WCW and WWF. He called himself the "Dogface Gremlin" and acted the part,
barking and running around on all fours before wrestling circles around his opponents. He often
ended his match by stretching his opponent within an inch of their lives or dropping
them square on their heads depending on whichever felt most right at the time.
His trademark amateur wrestling headgear, which he often worn loosely and unstrapped,
made him a memorable character long after he retired from full-time competition in 2008.
Since then, Steiner has become a shockingly regular-looking guy. He still has his goatee,
but his hair is short-cropped and his headgear is probably in his garage somewhere. What's more,
he now lives a pretty standard day-to-day life.
Even less recognizable in the suits he wears to work, he runs a successful
real estate company in Georgia and served on the Cherokee County school board for a time.
Probably the only way you'd recognize him in public is if he barked at you,
but for his own sake and ours, it seems that habit is behind him.
"The Total Package" Lex Luger had was one of the most impressive physiques
in wrestling history. In WWF, they called him the Narcissist,
because his body was so perfect he couldn't stop staring at himself.
Sadly, his career came to an end in 2007 when he suffered a spinal infarction that
left him paralyzed from the neck down. Remarkably, he's since regained feeling
in his body and can even walk with a cane, but all his muscle mass is gone.
Where he was once 275 pounds of solid strength,
he's now roughly 185. As he explained to the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 2008,
"I was freaky strong before. I was bench-pressing 450 pounds my senior
year of high school. I was a freak. Now I can't lift a 1-pound dumbbell."
Luger became a born-again Christian in the early 2000s. Since the injury,
he's been focusing on his faith, his family, and rebuilding his life outside wrestling.
"Thankfully, uh, the way the story goes,
I had been saved for a year and a half and god comforted me in that room."
While his wrestling days may be over, his mental strength seems to be more peak than ever.
Fans of late-'90s WWF will remember Val Venis. He was supposedly a male porn star-turned-wrestler,
with flowing hair, an exquisite body, writhing hips, endless naughty innuendos,
and entrance gear that made it look like he was wearing nothing but a towel. More often than not,
he would feud with a wrestler after "making a movie" with that opponent's girlfriend or valet.
Today, Venis looks less like an adult film star and more like a high school substitute
teacher. His long, curly hair is completely gone, and while many might still consider
him handsome enough for risqué roles, he might be too busy for that these days.
His main interest appears to be marijuana legalization. As Venis told the Inquisitr in 2015,
he feels pot saved his life, and he believes medical marijuana can save many more people as
well. He even runs his own pot business, Health 4 Life Dispensary, based out of Mesa, Arizona. Not
a bad retirement path for a guy who got famous for seductively placed hot dogs in his entrance video.
In 2007, Eve Torres won WWE's Diva Search, a competition designed to find new female
superstars. Over a six-year career, Torres won the Diva's Championship three times and became
a popular weekly fixture. Sadly, she was rarely presented as a true physical threat at the time,
as Divas were generally judged by their looks rather than their ring prowess.
Today, Torres could still hold her own against anyone in a fight. She looks largely the same,
but she's now a full-fledged fighter. Married to Brazilian jiu-jitsu icon Rener Gracie,
Torres is a purple belt in the martial art. She's also a trained kickboxer and the head
instructor of a women's self-defense program called Women Empowered.
"The Women Empowered program teaches how to neutralize an assault, escape if possible,
and if escape is not possible, how to incapacitate the attacker."
When in a less bruising mode, Torres works as a party planner with her sister-in-law. Together,
they run an event rental company called "inJOY The Party." In addition,
Torres worked as an ambassador for WWE after retiring from the ring. If she does return,
however, she could absolutely be a believable WWE Women's Champion,
especially now that the company focuses more on people who can actually wrestle.
In the late '90s, few wrestling women could match Tammy "Sunny" Sytch in pure popularity.
Her beauty, charisma, and sex appeal endeared her to millions, and, according to the WWE,
she was once the most downloaded woman in all of America Online. She wasn't a great wrestler,
but she was an amazing personality, and just about every fan's dream girl come to life.
Sadly, Sytch's life seems to have gotten a lot more complicated in the time since her heyday.
She's gained a considerable amount of weight, and The Gossip Life reports that she's in a
seemingly endless struggle involving the law, drugs, and money. She's been arrested several
times — in 2012, she found herself arrested twice in two days for stalking an ex boyfriend.
In 2013, she spent 114 days in jail after violating a restraining order
put out by that same ex-boyfriend. The final straw came in 2022, after she
killed a 75-year-old man in a car accident while she was under the influence. She was
sentenced to 17 years in prison after being convicted of DUI manslaughter the next year.
Mr. Bob Backlund is an old-school legend. In the '70s and '80s, he was a clean-cut and
technically brilliant strong world champion. In the '90s, he had reinvented himself as a crazy,
out-of-touch old man who wanted to teach young kids what true morality was. He even
ran for president in a 1995 storyline, and then he actually ran for Congress in 2000.
Since leaving wrestling, Backlund has slimmed down considerably, to the point
where he doesn't even look like an ex-wrestler, let alone a contemporary wrestler. However,
that didn't stop him from having a one-off showdown with WWE wrestler Heath Slater in 2012.
He looked a bit more himself several years later while he was briefly "life
coaching" Darren Young, though that may have just been the fact that he
was wearing a shirt and bow tie. Without those signature threads,
Backlund could easily be mistaken as any other man in his 70s with a slight build.
Fred Ottman is most famous for portraying one of two characters: the friendly Tugboat,
or the menacing Typhoon. Regardless of which role you preferred him in,
he was a monster of a man in all of them. Weighing nearly 400 pounds and rocking a menacing mug,
he struck fear in opponents' hearts even as he walked around the ring.
Today, the retired Ottman doesn't look anything like he used to. His
long hair is now cut close, and he sports a chalk-white goatee.
Even so, he seems to be healthy for his age, and that's really what counts. He
does still resemble another one of his alter-egos, Shockmaster,
though that's mostly because that particular character wore a mask much of the time.
Gene Snitsky had two main looks as a WWE superstar: hulking monster with hair and a long,
braided beard, or hulking monster with no hair, no eyebrows, and yellow teeth. Since 2008, though,
Snitsky's been mostly gone from wrestling, opting to focus on several other ventures.
While he's grown his hair, beard, and eyebrows back, he acts nothing like the
wild wrestler he portrayed. Nowhere was this more evident than in 2014,
when he served as a pitchman for the Power Pressure Cooker XL
In addition, he's been using his size in appropriate ways,
including bodyguarding. In 2013, Snitsky was serving as a member of Yankees legend
Alex Rodriguez's security team. The way he talks about this job,
it seems he's perfectly cut out for this defensive line of work. As he told Pennlive.com,
"Hopefully for the fans' sake, they stay in the stands. Because if they don't,
there could be a problem. Not for me, but for them. So my advice would be:
stay in the stands, 'cause if not, you might get hurt."
The legendary Bret "Hitman" Hart is one of the most recognizable faces in wrestling
history. With long, wet hair, a pink-and-black leather jacket, and pink wraparound sunglasses,
Hart made wearing pink cool for guys for the first time in a long time.
These days, however, he looks and acts very differently,
and not just because he's gotten older. He was forced to retire in 2000 after a
severe concussion brought about thanks to a stiff kick to the head from Goldberg.
"You need to stop everything right now. You know,
you can fix certain things but you only got one brain."
Two years later, he suffered a major stroke that caused paralysis on the left side of his body.
He recovered after months of therapy, but his body has clearly changed. He moves much more slowly,
his hair is mostly white, and he's even switched out his glasses for a more traditional set of
shades. It's a look in sharp contrast to the prime Bret we knew and loved,
but we're grateful to have him with us at all.
Awesome Kong was a behemoth who could mix it up against any challenger,
male or female. Her brief WWE run as Kharma was cut short by a pregnancy,
which very sadly ended in her baby's death, and since then she's been a part-timer in wrestling.
Since her WWE and TNA runs, Kong, whose real name is Kia Stevens, has become a totally
different person. She isn't wrestling much anymore, but she did play a wrestler on TV.
Beginning in 2017, Stevens played the character Tammé on Netflix's now-cancelled
series GLOW. As she told TV Guide, she could relate to her character heavily,
as Tammé was forced to adopt the persona "Welfare Queen" by her onscreen showrunners,
and Stevens herself was saddled with a character she initially didn't like. As a Black woman,
the name Kong was an incredibly racially insensitive title that
she ultimately embraced due to the persona being a "big opportunity." She explained,
"I believe Tammé would identify with what I did, [to] take that
name and own it and make it mean something of respect."
If she ever does return to full-time wrestling,
she'll surely have just as much respect as she did when she left.