The Best WWE Full-Time Job Gimmicks
Professional wrestling has made quite a few people obscenely rich over the years.
The WWE itself consistently brings in hundreds of millions in revenue every year. But not every wrestler can be so lucky, most aspiring superstars have to have part-time jobs for years until they make it big.
What is stranger though, is that some superstars on TV seem to keep their jobs when they make the WWE roster.
It must be tough putting in 40 hour weeks, and then somehow flying cross country to make it to the next live show.
But these men did. Or at least their characters supposedly did.
Here are the best wrestlers who also appeared to have full time jobs on the side.
Duke “The Dumpster” Droese
Profession: Garbageman by day, professional wrestler by night.
There’s nothing more lovable than your average, everyday garbageman, which is what made Duke “The Dumpster” Droese so endearing.
Droese was billed from “Mt. Trashmore”, Florida which is probably not a bad place to get into the sanitation business.
Droese’s biggest feuds in the WWF were Jerry Lawler and Triple H, two guys that were stark contrasts to his blue collar image. The wrestling life was too much for him though, and after a three year run in the company he asked for his release.
Legend has it that if you get up early enough on a Tuesday morning, you may see him take away your trash on garbage day.
Profession: Tax collector by day, professional wrestler by night.
The wrestling business must not have paid enough for I.R.S. (or Irwin R. Schyster if you prefer) so he stayed in the tax collecting business.
Multiple feuds of I.R.S.’s were based off of a wrestler not paying their taxes. He took non-payments of public citizens really personally. The man even once took back headstones from a graveyard.
After Schyster's run in the WWF, he joined WCW and took another job moonlighting as a wrestler. He was now Michael Wallstreet, a stockbroker.
The Big Bossman
Profession: Prison guard by day, professional wrestler by night.
The Big Bossman wasn’t content with his prison guard salary he made from the state, and decided to join the WWF for some supplemental income.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to separate his two professions, and often took out his anger and frustrations on his opponents by handcuffing them to the ring ropes and beating them with a nightstick.
Eventually it appeared that Bossman gave up the prison guard business, and took on a bodyguard gig for Vince McMahon in the Attitude Era.
With Bossman's years of working with the law, you'd think he would have known better to avoid criminal activity like dragging a man’s casket out of a cemetery with his car, and dog murder in the first degree.
Profession: Monk by day, professional wrestler by night.
Monkin’ ain’t easy. It probably doesn’t pay too much either.
According to a CNN article, some monks make their money by running a gift shop, renting out their retreat center, selling honey and raising live stock.
Ferguson instead made his money by attempting to violently beat other men up. Maybe it contradicted his religion, but who are we to judge?
Although it is a bit confusing why he felt the need to gyrate his hips and jump on a man’s face for his finisher...
Anyway, Ferguson had a very brief run in the company before he found his true calling in life… as Bastion Booger.
Profession: Professional wrestler by night, pimp by… late night?
Neither must have provided the money he was looking for, so he went down a different career path, a very illegal one. Yes, Wright decided to become a pimp and made his supplemental income by prostituting out various women.
For this he was cheered for.
Why he was never arrested for these crimes after bragging about them on national TV is a question for the authorities.
Anyway, late into The Godfather's WWE run he claimed that he now had a legitimate escort service. Fans didn't seem to care as much though, and The Godfather soon left the company, hopefully to find a more wholesome job.
Profession: Royal Canadian Mountain Policeman by day, professional wrestler by night.
The Mountie was one bad dude, and would often break the law by shocking his opponent with a cattle prod after the match.
Maybe that's legal in Canada, but either way, it's not cool.
The Mountie felt the WWF was only big enough for one man working full time in the law, so he had a showdown with The Big Bossman. However, he lost to him at SummerSlam 91, and per the match stipulation, had to spend a night in prison.
Sadly, this didn't teach him a lesson, as he was a jerk for the rest of his run. Hopefully, he got a nice pension from the police, as he was only in the WWF for a few years.
Profession: Porn star by day, professional wrestler by night.
Unlike most men on this list, Val Venis didn't have to work a 40 hour week. The man was an artist, an adult film actor, so he could pick and choose the roles that best suited him.
He always made it to his WWE job on time, so he should be applauded for that.
Venis though wasn't able to separate his professions. Besides wearing a towel to the ring, he would often engage in extramarital affairs with some of the women in the company.
Neither the adult film industry or the wrestling business are considered long term careers, so hopefully Venis made the most of his time in the spotlight.
Profession: Plumber by day, professional wrestler by night.
Dusty Rhodes may have been the son of a plumber, but T.L. Hopper was a plumber.
Along with his trusty plunger Besty, Hopper was the World Wrestling Federation's favorite handyman. Maybe he was hired just so the company could always have someone on hand to fix the toilets.
According to the U.S. Labor of Statistics, the average plumber makes $50,360 a year, so you would think Mr. Hopper wouldn't need another job. But maybe he had a lot of debts that he paid off?
Anyway, Hopper must have made his money and got out of the business fast, as he only lasted about a year under this gimmick. Hopefully he didn't flush those savings away.
Profession: Repo man by day, professional wrestler by night.
Unlike others on this list, Barry Darsow didn't come up with a different wrestling name for his new gimmick, he just used his job title: The Repo Man.
It would have been like The Mountie being called The Royal Canadian Mountain Policeman.
Apparently, a career as Smash just wasn't paying the bills, so he joined the repo business. Too bad for him that even though he was a heel, he was just too goofy and fun to hate. If someone were to re-posses your goods, you could only hope that it would be The Repo Man knocking on your door.
In another ill-fated second job, years later in WCW, Darsow became golfer Stewart Pain which was then changed back to "Mr. Hole in One" Barry Darsow, when actual professional golfer Payne Stewart died in a plane crash.
Profession: Physical fitness guru/infomercial hack by day, professional wrestler by night.
Simon Dean had a system, a weight loss system that was guaranteed to help you lose weight.
Simon thought he was trying to help, and tried to shame fans over their waist line. All it took was three easy payments of $43.99 to change our lives around.
For weeks on WWE TV, we were shown infomercials to buy his products, but he must not have been getting the kind of response that he wanted. He decided to sponsor Raw, and become a wrestler himself.
While his products may have helped you lose weight, they didn't appear to help enhance Dean's wrestling ability. He usually came up on the losing side of his matches.
It's hard to tell what sales were like for his Simon System, but even guys like Batista seemed to enjoy it.
Profession: Ballroom dancer by day, professional wrestler by night.
Fandango is the most recent entrant on this list, as most wrestlers in the WWE now seem to make enough money to just wrestle.
We don't know much about what Fandango does in his free time. Does he compete in ballroom competitions? Is he a ballroom instructor?
While Fandango is a welcome addition to the WWE roster, you would think that being physically beaten every night wouldn't be good for a dancing career.
Thurman "Sparky" Plugg
Profession: Stock car racer by day, professional wrestler by night.
Unlike quite a few other professions, you can at least see the parallels between racing and wrestling. They're high adrenaline, competitive fields that can earn the best a giant paycheck. That still doesn't mean one should try to attempt both.
As shown in his debut vignettes, Thurman Plugg was a man who raced cars, and told us we could call him Sparky. That was very kind of him.
Sparky himself though didn't care for this name much as he soon changed his name to Bob "Spark Plug" Holly.
He must not have won many events, as Spark Plugg eventually gave up the racing dream, and decided to cut and dye his hair, become "Hardcore" and dedicate himself to professional wrestling full-time.
Profession: Magician by day, professional wrestler by night.
There's not many people on the planet who can make a full-time living as a magician, so Phantasio may have wanted a larger audience for his bag of tricks.
Phantasio seemed like he may found have his calling when he won his first WWF match. But then, he never showed up again. It's a bit of a mystery.
What was also mysterious was the finishing move that Phantasio used: he reached into his opponents tights and ripped off their underwear.
That's pretty embarrassing, perhaps painful and probably illegal.
Profession: Clown by day, professional wrestler by night.
When your name is Doink, your career prospects are pretty slim. Doink probably took on the only two professions that he possibly could.
While Doink had some success as a wrestler, he was probably a bit too creepy for your everyday, child birthday party attending clown.
Profession: Dentist by day, professional wrestler by night.
Why Yankem needed to step into the ring is a good question, as he was probably making over $100,000 a year.
Well, it was never quite explained so we can only guess. As large as Yankem was, he just wasn't that good at dishing out pain when it wasn't in someone's mouth.
He took on Bret Hart multiple times, but didn't come out on top. Sadly, Yankem must have gone back to his private practice for awhile, until he re-emerged as the Fake Diesel and later, a much friendlier man known as Kane.
Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz
Profession: Major League Baseball player (when not on strike).
In 1994, Major League Baseball players went on strike. The season ended up being cancelled more than halfway through, and we were never given world champions.
One of these disgruntled strikers decided to join his hand at professional wrestling.
His name was Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz, mainly referred to as M.V.P. (most violent player) by the announcers.
A search through Major League Baseball Players with the letter "S" as a last name has yielded no Abe Schwartz. However, there was a Randy Schwartz, as well as two guys named Bill. One Bill died in 1940, and the other Bill died in 1961.
Perhaps Abe was using a pseudonym as to which MLB player he really was, or more likely it was just The Brooklyn Brawler with face paint.
Profession: Professional hockey player by day, professional wrestler by night.
Much like Mr. "Knuckleball" Schwartz, The Goon was a pro athlete from another sport. Mr. Goon, however, was taken out of his sport of choice because he was too violent.
Sure, The Goon was a hockey player, but that doesn't really explain why he had to wrestle in hockey gear. You would think that would just be uncomfortable. He should have at least tried some different apparel, as he usually came up on the losing side of his matches.
In the end, perhaps The Goon was too violent for the WWF as well, as he only lasted a few months before skating out of the company, and our hearts, forever.
Profession: College dean by day, professional wrestler by night.
Being the dean of a college is a lot of work.
They have to promote academic programs, hire employees and balance the schools' budget. Somehow Dean Douglas did all this, and found the time to train to become a professional wrestler.
Dean had very limited success in the WWF, though he did hold the Intercontinental title... for 11 minutes.
In the end, Douglas must have found that books were more fulfilling than body slams, as he lasted less than a year in the company.
Profession: Undertaker by day, professional wrestler by night.
Sometimes it's hard to remember, but The Undertaker started his WWF career as a working man who (according to Merriam Webster's definition of an Undertaker) "prepared the dead for burial and managed funerals" for a living.
For some reason, it's kind of hard to imagine The Undertaker consoling a grieving widow with a box of Kleenex, and helping her pick out the right kind of flower arrangement.
Due to Undertaker's perpetual zombie-like state, business must have not been that good for him, and he transitioned into wrestling full-time.
It was a good call, as multiple title runs and 21 WrestleMania victories is not too bad for a living or dead man.