Contrary to popular belief, having a long and uninterrupted career in a single promotion isn’t the norm in wrestling, at least not in North America. For decades it was commonplace for wrestlers to move from territory to territory with no guarantee that they would come back to previous ones unless they were incredibly successful.
And then there are those on the other side of the equation: those that keep coming back and keep being fired, either by Vince McMahon personally or by one of his aides.
As it turns out, there are two people that are believed to be tied for being fired by Vince the most throughout their careers, one of whom being a WWE Hall of Famer.
WWE Hall of Famer was fired several times by Vince McMahon throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer once did have a job with WWE before he moved on to start his Observer and in the early years of that publication’s existence, Meltzer did have a cordial relationship with Vince McMahon.
It was sometime during that short relationship that Vince brought up the wrestler he had fired the most up to that point and Vince couldn’t recall whether The Iron Sheik or Marty Jannetty had the highest number of terminations.
Meltzer didn’t give a specific number for either man but both wrestlers’ WWE careers were inconsistent at best.
In Jannetty’s case, he wrestled there first from 1998-1992 as Shawn Michaels’ tag team partner. He returned later in 1992 after dealing with an arrest, only to be released again in 1993 while feuding with Michaels.
Jannetty returned again later in 1993 and competed there until 1995 when he vanished following the aftermath of the court case involving Charles Austin, a wrestler that got paralyzed from Jannetty’s Rocker Dropper finisher.
Jannetty continued wrestling there throughout 1995 and 1996 before being let go once again, and since then has only made sporadic appearances.
As for The Iron Sheik, he wrestled first in WWE from 1979 to 1980 and then came back for a four-year run from 1983 to 1987. That run ended due an infamous arrest when he and then-on-screen rival “Hacksaw” Him Duggan were found riding together.
Sheik had another short run in WWE in 1988, and then another one from 1991 to 1992, and then another short one after that between 1996 and 1997 that ended after he failed a drug test.