10 Wrestlers Whose Careers Tanked After Winning Big
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00:00The follow-up is the most important part of wrestling. You'll hear annoying people like me
00:04talk about this all the time, but it's true. Doesn't matter how good the build is, if you
00:08pull the trigger and then don't stick the landing, it all goes downhill. My name is Simon Miller,
00:13and it's 10 wrestlers whose career went the wrong way after they'd smashed a homerun.
00:18Number 10, Bart Gunn. This one always gets me, as it wasn't even Bart Gunn's fault.
00:22He just accidentally ran afoul of the office. It all goes back to the brawl for all,
00:26which is so long ago, some people don't know. Happening in 1998, however, we had the grand
00:31idea to have shoot fights on Raw, which, yep, meant by proxy you were telling the audience that the
00:36rest of the matches were predetermined. Oh, dear. It was all put together so that Dr.
00:41Steve Williams could win, get the rub, and challenge Steve Austin. But if you want that,
00:45just have Williams win a bunch of worked scraps. That's the whole point. You're then in control.
00:50The then-WWF gave this up, though, and of course it went bad. Steve got absolutely smashed by Bart,
00:56who did indeed prove he was pretty damn tough. Good for him. Of course, this spot wasn't meant
01:00for he, so management was super mad. Hence why, come WrestleMania 15, they put him in a real boxing
01:06fight with pro fighter Butterbean, and he knocked Gunn out in seconds, and the final blow was sick.
01:12The WWF must have known this was a possibility, so essentially it was a punishment for messing up
01:16their plans. As you can imagine, Bart never recovered from this, and was soon let go. This was so
01:22horrible and dumb. Just give him a proper go and see. But nope, we did this instead. Not sure Gunn
01:28ever got back to where he was. Number nine, Vader. Before his WWF run, and after his WWF run,
01:34Vader ruled. He would just wreck people and was a believable champion. There's a reason individuals
01:39consider him one of the best big men ever. Maybe it was due to this success that Vincent Mann was mad
01:44at Vader when he did get brought in, because yeah, as we've heard time and time again, McMahon didn't like
01:49that. What you did elsewhere didn't count in the WWF. Sure. It was still major news when he did
01:55join on in 1996, and he was thrown in the deep end. He had a full-on war with Shawn Michaels,
02:00and that was kind of the issue. It seems like Vader whacked HBK a little bit too hard,
02:04leaving Michaels to tell anybody who would listen he was done with that guy, and I suppose everyone
02:09agreed. There was also problems with Vince McMahon, as Vader always claimed he was forced to compete in
02:13the Royal Rumble that year before he was 100%, so it all fell apart. Then Vince Russo had him go on
02:19TV and call himself a fat piece of shit. As soon as he was out the door, things got better for him,
02:25but in terms of the WWF, it was not a touch on what he'd done before. Number eight, Otis. The man is just
02:32so likable, hence why back in 2020, he got his story with Mandy Rose over like no one's business. People were
02:38desperate for them to get together. They eventually did, but good grief did he get dealt
02:41a bad hand. This all came to its grand conclusion during the pandemic. That was never going to work.
02:47You can't unite two people and expect it to go well when there are no fans. That was the joy of
02:52the angle. We still tried, as he was given the money in the bank briefcase, but all of the above
02:56plied there too. Then somebody made the great call for then-partner Tucker to turn on him as the
03:01Miz stole his world title opportunity. It was just bad. It did send Otis off into the doldrums for a while,
03:07but thankfully his association with Chad Gable and the Alpha Academy have put him back in the
03:11limelight. It may have already happened by the time you see this, but I would make him intercontinental
03:15champion at some point. And if we're going to go big, let's go big. It's the only way we will truly
03:20ever know. Number seven, The Great Khali. This is an interesting one, but look, whether you thought
03:26much of Khali's wrestling or not, The Office did get behind him. He was the flipping world heavyweight
03:31champion. This was 2007, so Vince McMahon just wanted big guys doing big guy things. And who bigger
03:37than The Great One? I think he was the legitimate seven feet tall, which explains why his knees
03:42stopped working. No way you can get away with that. He did work with the likes of Batista
03:46and Triple H, though, before everybody realized his limitations. Well, that's right. He became
03:51the Punjabi Playboy. Methinks the name came before the idea. He was also doing the kiss can before
03:57long, and for context, that would be like Steve Austin turning up and doing the hug hour. I mean,
04:01he was WWE champion too. The very last thing we saw him do was smooch Natalya, who at the time
04:07had a farting gimmick. So I try and be a positive guy. But this was quite the drop. Number six,
04:12Queen Zelina. This one sucks because the leader Vega did nothing wrong. I don't get it. It was
04:17Nia Jax who won the most recent Queen of the Ring, and that did rule. But in terms of the person who got
04:21this rolling, yeah, it's Vega, fresh from the Street Fighter tournament. Now, it was called the
04:26Queen's Crown then for some reason, but it is the same thing. And she even beat Piper Niven in the
04:31finals. The rumor mill says this was a make good after Vince McMahon had cancelled her 9-11 Smackdown
04:36appearance where Vega had a fitting tribute to her father. And yeah, why we did that anyway,
04:40I don't know, but you're damn right she deserves something. The problem was, while she did get this
04:45moment, afterwards, nothing. It just meant there were no plans, and that sucks. If anything actually
04:50harmed her because she vanished from TV entirely, it was like she didn't exist. Eventually, she was back
04:55in a random tag team with Carmella, which never works, before she got ruined by Rhea Ripley at
05:00Backlash 2023. I do hope we sort this soon. I like Zelina Vega. She just needs a proper chance.
05:07Number 5, Rob Van Damme. Do you want to know how popular RVD was? When he was brought into the WWE,
05:13nobody cared what sort of story he was involved with. It wasn't the same for the other invaders,
05:17but the crowd loved Rob so much, he was instantly over. Even in 2002, some thought he was ready for a
05:23world title run, but that's never how it works. He had to pay his dues, so he did. That brought us to
05:282006 when finding the powers that be did pull the trigger at the iconic one-night stand pay-per-view.
05:33He did have a lot of help to do this, but still, Van Damme defeated John Cena, and it was awesome.
05:39It also meant he was the WWE and ECW champion simultaneously, and it felt like he'd finally
05:45arrived. And then, my word, it went bad. Just one month later, Robert got busted in a drugs charge,
05:50and WWE didn't like that. He swiftly lost his belt, and I presume had to be punished,
05:55so also lost his momentum. Certainly felt like his WWE career was never the same again,
06:00because I suppose whatever trust he had was gone. RVD had everything needed to be the man,
06:05but he never really kept it up. Number 4, Akishian Too Cool.
06:09On paper, this should have never worked. Two-eyed supposed narcissist and a giant Samoan man.
06:14The whole thing was mad because Too Cool were never meant to get over as much as they did,
06:17and even the original idea was that they were going to be the uncool Hardy Boys.
06:22That's how Vince Russo pitched it. It all blew up in 2000 because of how popular Big Quiche got,
06:27because we applied the usual sound wrestling logic. If he's getting these kind of reactions,
06:31imagine if he was a bad guy. Hence why he was soon responsible for running over Stone Cold Steve
06:36Austin, and of course he did it for Da Rock. By then, Too Cool had fallen off because they'd lost
06:41their third friend. Grandmaster Sexay was then released in 2001 when he got into drug trouble.
06:46What a nightmare this turned out to be. It ruined all of them. Even then, though,
06:50people are still nostalgic about this. That's how much it was beloved.
06:54Number 3, Mr. Kennedy. Kennedy. This one was wild. Because not only was Ken the chosen one,
06:59Vince McMahon was such a fan, he was going to make him his son. That's right. He also won the Money in
07:05the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania 23, and almost instantly said he'd wait until next year and cash it
07:10in. He was so ballsy. Sadly, he then injured his shoulder, meaning Edge won the case off him,
07:15but this must have stung. What was thought to be a proper problem turned out to be something he
07:19fixed quite quickly. There was no need for him to lose his lovely contract. It was too late to
07:23change that, and before long, Kennedy got tied up in a steroid scandal. And after he caught the
07:28ire of John Cena and Randy Orton, he then got released. It was properly crazy. We all still
07:34thought he'd get a round two in WWE, because everybody does. Yet here we are in 2024, and it's never
07:40happened. Ken was most definitely the guy at one point. The turnaround was absolutely bonkers.
07:46Number 2, King Mabel. A lovely guy by all accounts, but also somebody who would tag his opponents a lot.
07:53Mabel was also an odd choice to win the King of the Ring, given Bretton Owen hard to come before it,
07:57and yeah, in 1995, he kept injuring people by accident. He still got his world title match against
08:02Kevin Nash at SummerSlam, though, when it went super bad. Mabel slammed his full weight down onto their
08:08diesel, and it was so poor, he almost got fired. Then months later, Taker did get it,
08:13because Mabel broke that guy's audible bone. My gosh. The big guy then did get his release,
08:18although of course he was brought back in 1999, before he went again. Then he was back as Big Daddy
08:23V. Just such odd gimmicks. It does go to show, though, that becoming king even back then didn't
08:28mean you were going to fly, because when it came to Mabel, he went in completely the opposite direction.
08:33Number one, Damien Sandow. The intellectual saviour of the masses was just a joy as an
08:39asshole heel. It worked so well, WWE management agreed. They decided in 2013 to have Damien Sandow
08:46win the money in the bank. As ever, WWE did the whole, well, you're going to lose until then,
08:51because the big victory will erase all that, when he got beaten by John Cena and failed to
08:56capitalize. It really did ruin this gimmick, but Sandow actually had more in his back pocket.
09:00He transformed into Damien Mizdow, or the Miz's stunt double, and it was wonderful.
09:06All WWE needed to do was have him eliminate his cruel boss during the Andre the Giant Battle
09:10Royal, which he did do, and then right away, the big show grabbed him and threw him to the floor.
09:16For goodness sake, just give him something. In 2016, they then released him, and all of this
09:21was ridiculous. You could do exactly what you were asked, and it didn't make a damn difference.
09:26Know of anybody else who hit the tippity-top before falling back to the bottom? Please do let me
09:30know in the comments below. Before you like the video, share the video, and damn it, subscribe!