3 Stars who regret leaving WWE and 2 who are happy they left

#1 Star who regretted leaving WWE - Stone Cold Steve Austin

HERE'S TO YA! 💀🍻#316Day @steveaustinBSR pic.twitter.com/k8FYWWmX5E

— WWE (@WWE) March 16, 2021

WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin is a major name in the wrestling business and a huge box office attraction. Austin knows how valuable he is, so when the company proposed him to put over Brock Lesnar on a normal episode of WWE RAW in 2002 with no build-up, The Texas Rattlesnake wasn't going to have it.

He downright refused to do as told and walked out on the company a few hours before RAW went live. It took almost a year for The Rattlesnake to step foot in a WWE ring again. He admitted years later that he regretted walking out on the company and Brock Lesnar.

“My biggest regret is when I walked out on Brock Lesnar in Atlanta. I’d worked with [Ric] Flair in a cage the night before in Columbus, Georgia, and had a blast because he’s my all-time favorite pro wrestler. Then, all of a sudden, I get the creative that they want me to do the favors for Brock in a non-advertised, qualifying match for some bull— thing."

He continued:

“I disagreed with it. I never like to blow smoke up my a**, but guys like myself, like Hogan, and a few others, they don’t grow on trees. So you want to sacrifice what you’ve built up in me? And with no buildup? But that walk out was still total stupidity and hard-headedness on my part. I should have shown up, and that is my biggest regret in the business of pro wrestling. Life is hard, and it’s even harder when you’re dumb. Sometimes you go through life and make mistakes, but the goal is to learn from your mistakes the first time and move on down the road.”

Brock Lesnar vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin sounds like a big-money match, and it would've been a poor decision to just give it away on weekly WWE television with no substantial buildup.

However, Steve Austin's walkout from the company left a lot of fans and wrestlers heartbroken and frustrated at the time. Luckily, Austin and WWE management were eventually able to move past the incident in the long run.