Unperson / Professional Wrestling

• In a case of "too expensive to keep" instead of falling out with the person, many Jesse Ventura commentaries are cut from recent DVDs. That said, there actually was a falling out between WWE and Ventura over video game rights in 1990. The next year, Jesse sued WWE over home video royalties that were withheld from him. He won almost $900,000 in back royalties and walked away with a court decision that significantly increased his royalties for subsequent WWE video releases. When WWE began releasing WCW footage as part of compilation DVDs, Jesse's commentary (unless absolutely necessary) was muted, resulting in many cases where Tony Schiavone would be heard on commentary in between periods of silence. Because WWE only has to pay royalties on physical media and not streaming platforms^note As you'd imagine this pissed off everyone that was or ever had been working for Vince once WWE stopped selling DVDs and their royalty checks disappeared. A couple of former wrestlers have tried to challenge this in court and have gotten nowhere. If this sounds familiar it's because the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike over this same thing twice (first in 2007 and again in 2023, with SAG-AFTRA joining in the latter strike), unfortunately wrestlers aren't unionized Ventura's commentary is intact on the WWE Network.
• Chyna (Joan Laurer): Thanks to a large number of reasons, such as general backstage conflict (Chris Jericho's second book paints her as difficult to work with), being on the bad side of the heirs to the WWE throne Triple H and Stephanie McMahon (Chyna and HHH dated, and at some point around their break-up, HHH dated, then married, Stephanie, and Chyna was let go from the company), and her stint in pornography, WWE erased much of her existence. They'd have had more success if she didn't do so many firsts in WWE, such as first woman to hold a men's (Intercontinental) title, first female to compete in the Royal Rumble, and the first woman in the King of the Ring. The situation started to mend, with WWE darling Trish Stratus and HHH saying Chyna definitely deserved a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame, and she is featured prominently in the Triple H documentary on the formation of D-Generation X and their convincing Vince McMahon to hire her. As of January 2015, they even included her in a WWE Vintage episode on bodyguards. After her untimely passing in 2016, Stephanie McMahon joined in stating that a Hall of Fame induction for Chyna is warranted. Sure enough, she got that wish several years later when D-Generation X was inducted in the HOF's Class of 2019.
• WWE tried, and did a pretty good job of this, after Chris Benoit's murder of his family and suicide although to some people, this particular unpersoning is a sore point, as during his career, the business exploited and potentially exacerbated his obvious mentally unwell state, a state which may have played a part in the murder-suicide:
  • You can find examples of this in WWE.com's title history section where articles on Benoit's championship reigns have been deleted - Benoit is still listed in the title histories, but you can no longer see the summary of the title win.
  • As far as archive footage goes, the WWE will no longer show Benoit matches or segments, unless Benoit's just a background figure, and will mute any audio referring to him. On DVD, if the match features Benoit but needs to be highlighted (such as the first Money in the Bank ladder match on an Edge DVD), they cut it down to highlights and either completely edit Benoit out of the match, or acknowledge that he was in the match but not show his in-ring performance. VERY rarely, WWE has included Chris Benoit footage in full-length matches released on DVD, but with edits made. ^{For example...}In the 2010 Elimination Chamber collection DVD, Benoit's EC match from New Year's Revolution in 2005 was shown in its entirety, but when the commentators said anything positive about him, they were muted and replaced with crowd noise. For the 2013 War Games collection, The Four Horsemen's entrance is cut from the 1997 match, which was the nWo (Kevin Nash/Syxx/Konnan/Buff Bagwell) vs. the Four Horsemen (Ric Flair/Benoit/Steve "Mongo" McMichael/Curt Hennig). In the 2013 Money in the Bank collection DVD, the same methods used in the two aforementioned DVDs were implemented again, as well as the use of a wide-angle camera instead of a close-up in the climax of the first MITB match at WrestleMania 21 in 2005, which showed Edge rushing in to cost Benoit the win, likely to telegraph what would happen and lessen the heroic effort Benoit showed in the match..
  • Even in the documentary the company did on their history, despite going over many other dark periods of their company (like the steroid scandal of The '90s), Benoit is never touched on. Perhaps the most glaring omission of Benoit's history is a vast majority of the Raw main event scene in 2004: his winning the 2004 Royal Rumble at the #1 position^note until 2021, Shawn Michaels was the only other man to do this, and thus, whenever the subject would come up, commentary would clumsily mention that two men have won from the #1 and one of them was Michaels, his victory in the main event of WrestleMania XX^note The only presence the main event has in WWE's "WrestleMania XX in 60 seconds" video is a short clip of Triple H and Shawn Michaels punching each other with Benoit nowhere to be seen, and Benoit was the man that Randy Orton defeated to win his first world title and become the youngest world champion in WWE history. When the WWE Network launched, it was announced that footage of him would appear in its original, (mostly) unedited form, with a disclaimer appearing before the relevant shows. His name, however, doesn't exist in the network search engine and his matches are not pinpointed in the scrolling bar of the shows, with the episode of WWE Raw that initially served as a tribute to Benoit being the only episode of the show to not be uploaded to the platform.
  • The 2015 WWE documentary series The Monday Night War does feature Benoit, but only very briefly, in footage of the January 2000 Raw episode where he and the other Radicalz made their first appearance after leaving WCW. He is not discussed separately from the Radicalz, and he is noticeably absent in discussion of topics like the WCW cruiserweight division and ECW.
  • A notable aversion was the "30 Years of WrestleMania" book (and its 35th-anniversary update) which shows and describes all of Benoit's matches across the 7 WrestleManias he performed at. Most notably, his WrestleMania XX victory, complete with the photo of him and Eddie Guerrero together in the ring, is included. While the book states that "future events would alter the perception of this moment," it ultimately lets it stand as a celebration to both men in that moment in time. The WWE 50 book also talks of Benoit and a large entry on his end.
    • Subverted for New Japan Pro-Wrestling which still shows his matches uncut and still acknowledge his accomplishments in the company. That being said, it helps that he went by Wild Pegasus and not by Chris Benoit in that promotion.
• Chris Hero was one of the men who shaped Chikara, but after he left in 2007, those in charge of the promotion decided to do their best to forget about him and make sure no one else reminds them of him. Fans get around this by instead talking about Kassius Ohno, the ring name he uses on WWE's NXT developmental brand.
• When CM Punk legitimately quit the company in January of 2014, WWE went full force with the unperson treatment. His absence was only ever acknowledged a handful of times (including a jab at his foray into MMA). They even did the classic editing out of photographs with his likeness removed from the SummerSlam 2013 poster on the WWE Network and hilariously a post it note covering his face on a poster in the background during an Ultimate Warrior documentary. At the 2015 Royal Rumble, the announcers falsely credited Seth Rollins with being the longest survivor of the previous year's titular match, although Punk actually outlasted Rollins. WWE even went so far as to erase him from a comic series shortly after his June 2014 firing (which was not announced to the public). He wasn't completely scrubbed from the WWE, being noted in several documentaries in the WWE Network and his videos are still available there and on the WWE's YouTube channel. It's more like they're ignoring his part in their history rather than erasing it, much in the vein of Brock Lesnar, who faced similar treatment when he left for the NFL, most likely to leave open the possibility of reconciling with Punk like they had with Lesnar. When Lesnar came back, all his accomplishments were promptly noted, even name-dropping the UFC, which the WWE steadfastly ignored until then. Nearly six years after his abrupt departure, Punk became an analyst for WWE Backstage, a Fox Sports 1 program which has an official relationship with WWE (as the Fox broadcast network airs SmackDown), although he is generally not mentioned in WWE-produced programming outside of promos for WWE Backstage. With that program going on hiatus (and later on, Punk's decision to sign with rival promotion AEW), WWE had no reason to mention Punk again... until AEW fired him in September 2023 and he returned to WWE at Survivor Series 2 months later. Since his return in November 2023, past material involving him has been shown and promoted on WWE's social media platforms.
  • Punk's wife A.J. Lee faced some fallout from this same instance. During the time that he had left but she still wrestled, fans chanted Punk's name during her matches, until Punk requested they chant his name at wrestlers that suck instead. By the time of her retirement, she held the Divas Championship for a record 295 days, 79 days longer than the previous record. During and after her retirement, Nikki Bella beat that record by six days, holding the championship for 301 days, at which point she lost it. Some fans suggest the timing of this was to further remove any mention of either Punk or his wife.^note Though Nikki's reign is pretty much a moot point now, as WWE basically unpersoned the Divas Championship itself when they retired it in 2016. It would be replaced by the WWE Women's Championship (first won by Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 32), which has since splintered into show-specific titles. This was done to officially end the piss break match/Fanservice era of women's wrestling and signify that it would be taken seriously. Case in point, the main event of WrestleMania 35 was Becky Lynch defeating Charlotte and Ronda Rousey in a three-way match.
• Was done to Hulk Hogan, who was engaged in legal troubles with pornography, but more for being caught on tape ranting against black people, using racial slurs. WWE, after firing him, removed all mention of him everywhere except the WWE Network, whose footage is still there for the world to see, though Hogan-centered programming like Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling are gone. More here. Triple H has said in an interview that he leaves the door opened for a potential return, if he makes amends. In July 2018, Hogan was re-instated into the Hall of Fame and made his return to TV at the Crown Jewel event later that year.
• Not even two months after the above Hogan example, Jimmy Snuka is now having this done to him as well. He was arrested for the death of his girlfriend in September 2015 (She died in 1983, and Jimmy Snuka was the prime suspect in her death, but no charges were filed. However, the case was never closed, and 32 years later, Snuka was finally arrested for the crime) and, much like Hulk Hogan, the WWE was quick to terminate his contract and remove any references to him from their website. This serves as a bit of an issue, as Snuka's daughter Tamina is currently employed as a wrestler in the WWE and uses a lot of his mannerisms when competing, including his famous splash, though they ditched her surname and she was never really a big player, getting start-stop pushes. After the case against him was dropped in January 2017 ^note To be more accurate, he was declared not competent to stand trial due to advanced dementia, and he passed away not long after, an article about his passing was posted on the WWE website, Repersoning him posthumously.
• For some reason Randy Savage never returned to WWE after the Monday Night Wars ended and was rarely acknowledged or celebrated on-camera. (There was a rumor going around online that this banishment was because he had sex with Stephanie McMahon some time in the early '90s, when Stephanie was still a minor). After his death in 2011, he was acknowledged far more often, and in early 2015, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
• Enzo Amore got this treatment after he was released in January 2018 for failing to inform the company about an ongoing police investigation against him in regards to possible sexual assault. You know it's bad when the company pointedly doesn't wish you well in your future endeavors while announcing your release. They completely removed his profile page from the website, and he isn't even listed on their alumni page (for context, even the above CM Punk is on that page). They even removed his face from the truck graphics, which are rarely updated. He's on the fast track to being Benoit'd at this point, and in this case, many don't blame them. Even after Amore was found to be innocent, his general behavior alienated his diminishing fanbase made him too toxic to bother with.
• After WCW was sold to the WWF in 2001, both Turner Broadcasting and its parent company Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) scrubbed whatever trace WCW or professional wrestling had from their history. Turner's website (before the company's dissolution after AT&T purchased Time Warner) had no pages or press releases mentioning WCW in any capacity, while WarnerMedia's website buries mentions of WCW as a footnote. Their desire to pretend WCW didn't exist comes off as unusual, since broadcasting professional wrestling was one several services (alongside cable news via CNN and a back catalog of classic movies and cartoons acquired from MGM) that helped put Turner Broadcasting on the map. Then again, nobody in Turner or Time Warner besides Ted Turner himself wanted anything to do with WCW and once Ted lost his power, WCW was soon sold off and both TBS and TNT were rebranded. The only remnant of WCW reeking in the companies is Ready to Rumble, which features many WCW wrestlers who were prominent at the time of release and was produced by then-WCW sister studio, Warner Bros. Even as TNT began airing wrestling again, through All Elite Wrestling's flagship program Dynamite, the network still preferred to keep any mention of WCW as a footnote ^note Mainly because WWE bought the WCW name and all associated trademarks in 2001. When Sting made his comeback in AEW in 2020, much was made about his long association with TNT, but WCW itself was not brought up.
  • Ironically enough, AEW used the name of an old WCW pay-per-view event, Bash at the Beach, for a special episode of Dynamite in 2020. Of course, due to said WCW event's lineage being owned by WWE, the AEW version has an entirely new lineage.
• When D-Generation X was announced to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, the names specified were Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Chyna, Road Dogg, Billy Gunn and X-Pac. Notably missing from the list? Rick Rude and Tori. Both wrestlers had left the WWE on acrimonious terms (though for different reasons; Rude left for WCW in solidarity with Bret Hart after the Montreal Screwjob and proceeded to cut an infamous shoot promo blasting the WWF on his Nitro debut^note While he was on Monday Night Raw at the same time thanks to the WWF taping schedule (they'd do Raw live, then tape next weeks Raw with the same crowd immediately after the live one ended), which made the WWF look bush league. THIS is what pissed Vince off, not Rude leaving or the promo itself, while Tori was fired for refusing to go back into training) and weren't around in the stable long enough to make a lasting impact. That being said, Rude was inducted in the Hall of Fame two years prior, albeit as a standalone wrestler.
• Chris Jericho got the Warrior/Hogan treatment after his departure from WWE, the company that made him a household name to wrestle in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, focusing with his band Fozzy and later signed to All Elite Wrestling in early 2019 and later becoming the first World Champion for AEW became the last straw to Vince McMahon and management who later got angry at him and saw as a sign of "betrayal" by later removing him from intros, no mentioning him on live broadcast and WWE Superstars are no longer allowed to appear on his podcast and he's presumably banned from the company at all. This would change in 2021, as he made an appearance on Steve Austin's Broken Skull Sessons show on the WWE Network despite being with AEW at the time.
• When Toryumon Japan and Dragon Gate split in 2004, it was widely assumed that Magnum Tokyo played a major role in the split, although what exactly that role was no one has said. In 2019, Dragon Gate and Último Dragón decided to mend their split, and almost all of the older Toryumon wrestlers who'd sided with Ultimo ended up returning to the promotion. One of the biggest names of the Toryumon days, however, hasn't been so much as mentioned. Which one? Magnum Tokyo.
• After Owen Hart's untimely death, WWE has repeatedly tried to induct him into the Hall of Fame or release a tribute DVD of him. Unfortunately, his widow Martha refuses to have anything to do with WWE and whenever they try to mention him, she sues them, so they stopped trying. One of Owen's best friends, Mark Henry, had begged her to let them put Owen in the Hall of Fame, but she still refuses. Ironically, in 2021, she allowed All Elite Wrestling to honor him.
  • Connected to Owen, the PPV where he died was all but been erased from history almost immediately. Footage from the PPV (to include Stone Cold losing the world title to the Undertaker) was never used in WWE programming. The entire PPV following Owen’s accident is incredibly awkward and somber to the point that the Undertaker and Pat Patterson look visibly upset in a way that breaks kayfabe.
• WWE removed Ric Flair from their website due to the infamous "Plane Ride from Hell" from 2002 resurfacing thanks to Dark Side of the Ring covering the incident in 2021. His banishment has since ended, a WWE-produced Flair documentary was released on Peacock in December 2022.
• CM Punk and Ace Steel had a legitimate altercation with The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega which was caused by Punk's comments during the media scrum after AEW All Out 2022. The suspensions that resulted from that event were never announced by the company, with the personnel involved outright disappearing from television. The titles they held (the AEW World Championship for Punk and the Trios Championship for the Young Bucks/Omega team) were simply said to be vacated. For the Bucks and Omega, this lasted for two months until segments starting running featuring footage of them from company press conferences which then are edited to remove the three in a reference to the controversy (their suspensions were said to have been ended). The Elite would eventually make full returns, Steel was fired, and as of the beginning of 2023 Punk and AEW CEO/booker Tony Khan are reportedly at an impasse in buyout negotiations, with the major sticking point supposedly being the inclusion (or length) of a non-compete clause^note Though as mentioned above he might not be welcomed back to WWE with open arms, especially now that Triple H is running the on-air side of things. Punk returned to AEW in June of 2023, only to be suspended again and fired in early September following another backstage altercation with Jack Perry. Punk ended up shockingly returning to WWE in November 2023, a comeback previously thought to be impossible.
• Following a sex trafficking lawsuit in January 2024, Vince McMahon resigned from WWE and their parent company, TKO. Not too long after, the official WWE website completely purged his entire profile page, with the page simply reading, "You are not authorized to access this page."
  • This same scandal also implicated Brock Lesnar, resulting in him being erased from WWE's records, getting removed from various media including the WWE Supercard mobile game and the (at the time) upcoming WWE 2K24 video game, and planned storylines with Dominik Mysterio and Günther getting axed. To add further insult to injury, he was removed from the "Then, Now, Forever, Together" intro video and replaced with LA Knight. 2K24 was later found to be too far in development to remove him, so Lesnar was made unplayable instead (whether modders will unlock it is yet to be seen).

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