Most Disappointing Wrestlers in History

[Phil Schneider]

I think if you asked the folks going to OMEGA shows in the 90's who the biggest star out of that group was going to be, you would have gotten unanimous votes for Venom, big guy, stuff looked great, bumped awesomely for flyers. He had a good run in MCW, got stuck with the awful Joey Abs gimmick, was stuck in Velocity hell for a while, washed out and quit wrestling.

[Sidebottom]

Eh, I think you're selling his 1998 very short. He was a key player in his ability to get a lot out of guys who were really green. Edge and Ken Shamrock were put in with Owen because he dragged something good out of them when they had very little to offer.

 

Being put with new comers in mid card matches? How does this fight the argument his star power had dropped?

[BillThompson]

The company still trusted him to be in programs with new people that they wanted to be heavily featured in the company. He wasn't main event level anymore, but he was kept relevant and the fact that these guys were hanging with or beating Owen was always played up as a big deal. The Shamrock feud was played up as a big deal altogether.

[KrisZ]

I love Buddy Landell to death and he is one of my all-time favorites but if he had stayed clean he would've been one of the biggest wrestlers of the last half of the 80's.

[Bierschwale]

 

If Owen survived and stayed at a high level into the brand split era, what's more likely: him being part of the SmackDown core and getting upper card runs, possibly with WWE title programs, or him having a slightly more dignified version of the Lance Storm role on RAW?

 

The natural pessimist in me assumes the latter.

 

I have a lot of love for Owen Hart, but anybody who talks about him missing his opportunity for a world title run in the late 90's are deluded if you think of the climate at the time of his death and afterwards. Owen's peak as a star was 1994 / 1995 with a fine 1997 also.

 

I only think that he would have gotten the world title if he had stayed on for much longer than after it's been said that he wanted to retire, and became the guy given the belt after Eddie asked to drop it in '04 (when he still would have only been 39) instead of Bradshaw, but feuds with Angle/Lesnar/'Taker in '02-'03? Totally possible.

 

But Bill's response is why I, again, think that he'd have ended up doing essentially wasteful stuff as a midcard heel on RAW with Morley and Regal. Maybe even worse; is there anyone Vince would have thought would be a better fit in the fucking Un-Americans than Owen?

[Al]

I haven't seen Terry Taylor mentioned yet. He never even got established above lower midcard after he left the UWF.

[Childs]

I was going to do a whole post defending Windham and describing him as the Mickey Mantle of wrestling. But then I really looked at it and Barry was only a top worker for what, six years? And unlike Mantle in baseball, he was never the flat-out best. So that comparison doesn't work.

 

And yet I still struggle calling him a disappointment because he was so damn good and not in a flash-in-the-pan way.

 

This is such a common theme in sports--athletes who generate enormous excitement because they're precocious and end up labeled as disappointments despite producing very good careers. Over the years, I've tried to discipline myself to judge what they actually do instead of judging through the prism of my own expectations. But I still fail at it all the time.

 

I don't know. If a guy has great talent and uses it to good effect but lacks the rare drive to become best of the best, is it fair to label that disappointing? Don't most of us squander our talents at least as much as Barry Windham did?

 

I just think he's an interesting litmus test for how we judge what is vs. what could be.

[notoriusvig]

Has Monty Brown been mentioned yet? In TNA, he had a shit load of charisma and I always thought he'd be great in the WWE. He had size but once he got to the WWE, he looked boring and uninteresting and wasn't booked strong either.

[Sidebottom]

The company still trusted him to be in programs with new people that they wanted to be heavily featured in the company. He wasn't main event level anymore, but he was kept relevant and the fact that these guys were hanging with or beating Owen was always played up as a big deal. The Shamrock feud was played up as a big deal altogether.

 

Everything was played up as a big deal back then though. From the opening matches all the way through to the semi and main events. As you've already said, Owen wasn't in the main events anymore by 1998, nor was his work or character (and standing of both) as good as it had been, which was my original point.

[C.S.]

Another one: The New Foundation. Remember that Owen/Anvil team? Okay, "New" anything generally doesn't work, but I thought they were AWESOME together. It didn't last though - I think because Anvil quit/got fired/whatever it was. Their replacement was the lesser High Energy team of Owen and Koko. That sucked. They had no chemistry, and I remember Owen saying they didn't even like each other behind the scenes. I also kinda dug The New Blackjacks (Windham and Bradshaw), but I never expected them to get a major push, so I wasn't necessarily disappointed when they didn't.

[BillThompson]

As I said, his work in 1998 was still great, easily on par with his mid-nineties output. His opponents weren't as great, so the matches weren't as great, but what Owen was doing in the ring was just as great if not better since he was doing it with lesser opponents.

[Sidebottom]

Well that's a pot of contradictions

[kayfabe1984]

I'm gonna cast a vote for Sean O'Haire. He seemed like a can't miss prospect at the end of WCW but completely crashed and burned once they folded.

[Smelly McUgly]

Regarding Owen Hart, I think it was a mistake not to capitalize on his immediate popularity right after Survivor Series '97, when he was the "sole surviving Hart" and cut a promo about wanting to beat up Shawn Michaels not because of that "stupid piece of tin" Michaels had, but just to avenge his family, and hey, if he ruined Michaels's life by taking his gold too, that was the cherry on top. The crowd really reacted to it and Owen seemed revitalized as a character after having been a heel for the past four-plus years. I don't have a problem with him being shunted down to work against Jeff Jarrett and Triple H in the new year, but really, he should have had a two-week WWF Championship reign where he took the title off Michaels on a RAW and dropped it back to him at IYH: D-Generation X to take full advantage of what they momentarily had with him.

 

In terms of his work, he really was excellent up until his passing. Particularly, the Lion's Den Match he had with Ken Shamrock at Summerslam '98 was wonderfully paced with a nice "claustrophibic cage match" sort of thing going on as I recall, and though I might have to watch it again because I have not seen it in quite awhile, I think that it certainly was one of the three or four best WWF matches of that year (which I think is high praise because typically, the only really strong matches from that year in WWF are typically the mains on PPV, and so a mid-card PPVmatch being so very good stood out quite strongly to me).

 

However, Owen Hart was, for the most part, a career upper-midcarder in a major company, and I think that's about where he fits in terms of his talent level. I wouldn't call the whole of his career particularly disappointing. If he was going to go any higher, he would have had to be in a different time and place. It's a shame that he wasn't around when the WHC was a thing in the mid-to-late '00s. I think he could have done Edge's "transitional champion/opportunistic heel" gimmick MUCH better and with a better output in the ring than Edge did, in particular.

[Johnny Guitar]

Has Monty Brown been mentioned yet? In TNA, he had a shit load of charisma and I always thought he'd be great in the WWE. He had size but once he got to the WWE, he looked boring and uninteresting and wasn't booked strong either.

 

Monty surely gets a pass just for being in TNA. They've never made any stars, and have severely diminished the star power of everyone one who has ever worked for them.

[Death From Above]

Kensuke Sasaki is a guy that has some really, really good high end stuff, and whole chunks of his career that are just a total waste of time. Sort of a weird career where he has some cool stuff early on, drifts just aimlessly for years, then had a good run in the early 2000's. Not "most disappointing ever" but if he hadn't kicked it into gear, he probably would be. Shows some real flashes in the early 90's before he wandered into the wrestling jungle for a while.

 

Jinsei Shinzaki struck me as a guy that has all the physical attributes to be something big but he doesn't really have a ton of must-see singles matches other than his Tokyo Dome match with Muta and at least one super-awesome match with Gannosuke in FMW. Most of his singles stuff is "okay but nothing I need to see twice". He did some cool shit but often in the most baseline way possible.

 

Yuji Nagata having a theme song called "Mission Blow" is a really unfortunate choice, in hindsight.

 

As far as singles matches go, Takao Omori went from career AJPW midcarder, to one really random and fun run to a Champion's Final against Kobashi which was a pretty wild match, and then... pretty much nothing. Just never was able to put it together in a way that people really wanted to see. Decent tag team with Takayama but his singles resume is non-existent.

[JaymeFuture]

Some awesome nominations from you guys here - the podcast is now up, if you wish to listen to us discussing as many of the candidates as we could, from the likes of Ahmed Johnson, Sid and Lex Luger, to misfires such as Sean O'Haire, Mr. Kennedy and Big Show, to some interesting candidates such as Barry Windham and CM Punk, as well as a hell of a lot more. This was a really fun show to do, if you're interested you can listen on the link below, enjoy.

 

http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com/mf/play/4df9m5/SCGRadio20-MostDisappointingWrestlers.mp3

[rzombie1988]

I'm going with the obvious, as I'm the only member of his fanclub - TOM MAGEE:

 

Cool background/character? Yep. World Strongest Man contender(almost won it), had some boxing and gymnastics training too. He was also a black belt, was in some movies and even had a documentary on him. If you can't figure that out, then get out of wrestling. Bill Watts would have went nuts for him.

The look? Pretty much the prototype except that he wasn't blonde. Ripped, good looking and tall.

Athletic? Yep. He could do moonsaults, handsprings, cartwheels and SSP's, but never really turned those into moves. Probably because those moves weren't really invented/well known yet.

 

I know he's looked down upon as being horrible, but I don't think he was that bad. The Wajima match sucked, but Wajima was a horrible wrestler and shouldn't have been put in there with someone green. His match with Terry Gibbs was fine to good(http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7vyfm_tom-magee-vs-terry-gibbs_shortfilms)), the Choshu match wasn't that bad) and he looked okay to passable in some of his other stuff.

 

I really just think he must have been a pain to deal with backstage. That's really the only thing I can think of for Baba and Vince giving up on him, when the potential was clearly there. I also don't think the WWF really helped him by sticking him against Terry Gibbs and other low card guys for 1-2 years in squashes instead of putting him out there on these no name shows where he could work 10 minutes or so and figure it out. His match with Bret was supposed to be great, so I can't understand why they wouldn't have him work Bret more to have better matches and to learn how to be a better worker.

 

Easily the most disappointing wrestler and one of the biggest instances of dropping the ball.

[rzombie1988]

LONG ONE COMING UP. Chiming in on some others:

 

Brian Pillman - He didn't disappoint me as a wrestler but he made bad choices and promoters were too worried about his height. Should have been Austin's main foil because he was the heel Austin. He really should have been like the Kurt Cobain of wrestling, and I think he could have led the Attitude Era. When I think late 1990's, I think Brian Pillman.

 

Bam Bam - Had a good career, but was never really a star to me. Can't really say much else that hasn't been said. Should have been a top guy.

 

King Kong Bundy - His career totally fell off after WM2. He did absolutely nothing from 1988-1995, when he should of. I don't think he was super great or anything, but I think he wasted his youth. Sucks though because once you lose to Hogan in the WWF, there's not much else to do.

 

Billy Graham - Was way ahead of his time, wasn't good in the ring and should have had Hogan's spot. Also should have stayed away from the drugs. No one is cooler than the Superstar in the 70's.

 

Jinsei Shinzaki - Should have made more of his WWF run and should have been the WWF's Great Muta. He had the tools, but constantly looks like he is going through the motions and didn't have much in the way of charisma, though I suppose that's part of the gimmick.

 

Nathan Jones - Great backstory, foreign and had a cool look. Sucked in the ring and his push sucked as well. WWE would have likely kept him had he not been a pain, as he would have easily been their go to guy for Australian tours.

 

Samoa Joe - Was the man in 2004 and was clearly going to be the heavyweight wrestler. Then you got TNA'd and have been a joke.

 

Low-Ki - Easily on par with Dragon, Punk and others. Can't resist getting into trouble backstage and burning bridges.

 

Teddy Hart - Similar to Low-Ki. Has the look and the name. Blew it two or three times in WWE and wasted his career.

 

*************

Subsection 1 - WWE 2005-now talent

 

If you weren't Cena, Orton, HHH, Batista, you probably didn't get what you were worth during this time. Let's face it, you weren't getting to the main event and you weren't getting a chance to succeed.

 

Carlito - Hey Carlito, did you see Alberto's WWE run? It really should have been you who was overpushed and main eventing. I've met him a few times and can see why WWE thought he was a headache.

 

Drew McIntyre - Oh Drew. You have the looks and the talent, why do you have to have a crazy girlfriend?

 

MVP - Good gimmick, good on the mic and was getting good in the ring. Then got heat and got a losing streak gimmick, then got fired. Became a "former WWE guy", didn't look good in NJPW and then went to career hell, aka TNA.

 

John Morrison - Had the looks and the athleticism. Then he got one of the worst character's ever in John Morrison and was treated to silence for the rest of his run.

 

Shelton Benjamin - Was everyone's favorite for a week or two in 2004. Then he became one of the laziest wrestlers and one of my least favorite wrestlers ever. He then went to promotions that would push his athleticism and never looked good in any of them.

 

Charlie Haas - Didn't get into you until your ROH run. You finally got a character after years of trying then retired from ROH before you could capitalize on it.

 

Tyson Tomko - You figured it out after years of hard work and trying. You even went through the hell that is TNA. Then you got into drugs and legal trouble. Dumb.

 

Paul Birchall - A 6'2+ guy who can fly, got into terrific shape and was from Britain? What, he even made a terrible gimmick decent? Sorry man, Vince doesn't watch movies. Not Paul's fault at all.

 

Melina - Improved a lot and was good on the mic, but got into way too much trouble backstage and burned all her bridges.

 

**************

Subsection 2 - Joshi

 

I could do a whole section on Joshi girls who blew it. The key thing to takeaway is that 1) Japanese women's wrestling isn't drawing or making money and 2) women retire all the time due to that and wanting to get married and have kids. I think following or caring about joshi is completely pointless because anyone who looks promising will retire and it's just a hopeless business model.

 

The list:

 

Yuzuki Aikawa - She was a model in Japan and then became a wrestler. They pushed her to the moon. She quit after 2 years. Was very disappointed in her and upset because I wanted to see her succeed and she just gave it up. She really got wrestling too and just had everything you would want in a Japanese woman's wrestler.

 

Yuhi - 16 year old phenom in Japan. Similar to Aikawa, she's retiring or already did retire. Thought she was going to carry Japanese wrestling. She had the best debut match I've seen in a long time and was my Rookie of the Year. Hey Yuhi, newsflash, you wrestle twice a week tops. You have plenty of time to do school and work and still wrestle.

 

Fuuka - Similar story to the two above. Really good looking wrestler who improved and was a great self promoter. Had a cancer scare and quit. Works as an announcer and other things now but should have been a top girl.

 

Toshiyo Yamada - Remembered for her stuff with Manami Toyota and little else. Seriously got passed by and depushed due to injures and ?. Almost everyone else in her class and time got pushed higher than her.

 

Yasha Kurenai - Cool look but never got it in the ring. Probably could have done a Takako Inoue 1998 singles run had she been decent. Also had the misfortune of being in LLPW, where no one except Kandori got to do anything.

 

Any of the Jd' Star Athress girls - Jd' star decided to teach a bunch of actresses and idol types how to wrestle in the early 2000's. On paper it seemed like a great idea. The girls would bring fans in based on their looks and if any of them became decent wrestlers, they'd instantly be a star. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, it turns out models and pretty girls who don't like wrestling don't like the injuries, bad pay or other crap that comes with wrestling. They all found out that this was getting them nowhere and all of them were gone within two years, minus a few. Oh and one of them is now working in soaplands and made AV videos, likely pulling in about 10x what she did as a wrestler. Jd' Star - where being in even sleazier industries than wrestling gets you further than wrestling does.

 

Most of the STARDOM Girls - As I said above, you all are likely working for peanuts in a depressing joshi wrestling industry. Similar to the athresses, when you take pretty non-wrestling fans and make them wrestle, it usually doesn't pan out. Too many of you got injured then quit, wasting your time and ours. Yoko Bito gets a pass for her bad injury and Mika Nagano does as well for getting pregnant. Again, great idea but it can't work in today's age. Feel very bad for Yoko as she was going to get the push and was great.

[PeteF3]

My joshi knowledge is basically what I've read + seen of the '90-'95 Yearbooks, but Yamada came across to me as someone who looked like (or was) all-world in tag matches--basically a female Kawada--but was badly exposed as a single. Not that she was terrible, but it doesn't seem like she ever had the goods to pull off an epic singles title match.

 

I can't hold Bundy's inactivity against him too much--he had a lucrative computer endorsement deal at one point (or at least a far less physically taxing one) and got to do guest shots on Married...with Children and other places. There were worse things for ex-wrestlers to be doing.

[Al]

Two names I haven't seen, Jay Youngblood and Don Kernodle. Youngblood was in the semi-main of the first Starrcade and was dead within two years. Kernodle actually landed in the WWF soon after the Final Conflict, but never seemed to even get a major program after that.

[goodhelmet]

I am curious, what do you guys find more disappointing... guys not living up to their talent or booking failing someone's talent?

[BillThompson]

Guys not living up to their talent, definitely. I think, and I may be alone in this, that booking consistently let Kurt Angle down. Sure, he had some stretches as a top guy, but every time he was about to become thee guy his legs were cut out from under him by terrible booking. Yet, he's still an all time great wrestler in my mind because he lived up to his talent and entertained the heck out of me as a wrestler. Someone like Marty Jannetty is infinitely more disappointing because he always had solid booking behind him, and yet at every turn he squandered his opportunities and wasted the immense amount of talent he had.

[rzombie1988]

Oh and add John Kronus to the list. The man could do some cool stuff but got fat, aged quickly and made the great move of going to XPW. He literally looked about 45 by the time he was 30.

[rzombie1988]

I am curious, what do you guys find more disappointing... guys not living up to their talent or booking failing someone's talent?

Booking always. Good booking can hide the least talented. Bad booking can destroy the most talented.