- 2 years ago
Simon Miller on 10 wrestling debuts that didn't go the way everyone hoped!
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00:00 It's important to always make a good impression.
00:02 For example, if I look you in the eyes now and say I don't like cheese and you've
00:06 never watched a What Culture video before, you're going to shake your head and think
00:09 that bordejo and I'm done.
00:11 Thankfully I love cheese and dream about it every single day, but this is much more pertinent
00:15 for this video anyway.
00:16 When we are talking about professional wrestling, given things that have happened recently that
00:20 sparked debate, please do hit that subscribe button.
00:25 This is why 10 debuts really didn't go to plan, or worse to that effect.
00:31 Here's why.
00:32 Screw it up.
00:33 We will start at number 10 and the most recent one because yes, in AEW, Satnam Singh did
00:43 his big debut and the lights went off and when they came back on again, lots of people
00:48 stared at him like I'm not 100% sure who that is.
00:51 He's very impressive as a human being, but I don't know what to do.
00:55 But look, even Tony Khan came out and said, "Oh yeah, I made a mistake and I'll learn
00:58 from this, I'll educate myself and I'll do better next time."
01:02 And that's a nice analogy, a nice metaphor for life.
01:04 You can't hit a home run every time, but it's damn sure important that you're always
01:08 trying new things, otherwise you can't open the door to happiness.
01:11 Still the internet did go crazy and went, "Oh my gosh, All Elite Wrestling must be
01:15 dead" which is a little bit much, because yes, as Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutch were beating
01:19 up Samoa Joe, lights went out, light came on, we've already talked about it.
01:23 And I do understand it too, because usually when you do this gimmick, it means a massive
01:27 star where people are going, "Oh my gosh, he's about to appear."
01:30 And while the commentators did do a decent job going, "Oh, that's Satnam Singh, we know
01:34 about him, he's been training here, there and everywhere.
01:36 We had thousands of people in the building, but couldn't hear the announcers, so they
01:39 had absolutely no clue."
01:40 It has been far better since though, and I actually thought the angle they did on Rampage
01:44 following this made me go, "Hi, I'm kind of interested in this giant."
01:48 As long as the curve goes that way to the point where we get to the end of it, everyone
01:52 is doing backflips, apart from Satnam Singh, because he's way too tall, then we should
01:56 just smile and see what's around the corner.
01:59 So the main problem really was that there was no noise.
02:01 And you're always in a big noise when you get a debut, which moves us onto number nine,
02:05 Tito Ortiz debuted in TNA, my gosh.
02:08 Happening in 2013, Tito did indeed reveal himself as the mystery man that was going
02:13 after the main event mafia and the Aces and Eights, and well, it stands to reason that
02:19 nobody in the building knew who Ortiz was, because they were super duper silent.
02:24 The worst part is, he just stood there with his arms crossed, going like this for what
02:27 felt like 47 years, and the commentators didn't say anything.
02:31 At that point, one of the commentators should have gone, "Oh my gosh, it's MMA's Tito
02:35 Ortiz, but they said no."
02:36 I mean, it was so cringeworthy, I was watching at home and I wanted the ground to swallow
02:39 me up, and honestly this just felt like one big advert for Tito Ortiz vs. Quinton Jackson,
02:46 which was going to happen on a Bellator show, because who else was stood in the ring?
02:49 That's right, it was Quinton flipping Jackson.
02:52 So really this was an angle that made you want to die inside, and that is not why I
02:56 watch wrestling.
02:57 Sheesh.
02:58 And at least when we get to number eight, it's very funny and a classic, because of
03:01 course it's the Shockmaster.
03:02 I don't really know what else can be said about this in 2022, because it's become so
03:06 popular, it's basically an internet meme.
03:08 But when the former tugboat did jump across the WCW, somebody said, "Put on this sparkly
03:14 Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet, which we'll get to in one minute, and why don't you go
03:18 smashing through that wall?"
03:20 And when he did go smashing through the wall, he caught his foot on a step, he fell down,
03:24 and that was that.
03:25 The character was over.
03:26 What no one mentions though is those words that just came out of my mouth.
03:30 Why did Phil Oppmann not go to anybody and say, "Are we not going to get sued by Lucasfilm?"
03:35 Because I tell you.
03:36 At some point they probably would have done.
03:39 This was an absolute weird rip off.
03:40 When you do look at it in hindsight though, this was the best thing that could have happened,
03:44 because that persona was never going to go anywhere, but because it's now drowning in
03:48 humour, we are going to talk about it until the end of time.
03:51 I was at a wrestling convention the other day, and who was one of the guests?
03:55 It was Phil Oppmann.
03:56 And what did he do?
03:57 He pretended to trip up like the Shockmaster.
03:59 I mean, he made a Philippian career out of it.
04:02 Which was almost the same for number seven, but it wasn't.
04:04 Brode as clay.
04:05 Because this is one of those WWE debuts where the intros, videos just went on and on and
04:10 on and told us that when Brode as Clay did arrive on the main roster, he was going to
04:14 be a big bad angry pood who was going to beat the crap out of you.
04:18 And then when he finally did pop up, he thought he was a dancing dinosaur.
04:23 I am not kidding.
04:24 Because he had spangly legs, he was accompanied by the Funkadactyls, and so many wrestling
04:28 fans around the world started staring around going, "well what the hell is happening?"
04:32 I suppose he did commit to it as best as he could, but surprise surprise, within a matter
04:36 of weeks, WWE had started treating this act like a whole joke.
04:40 So what did the audience do?
04:42 They treated it like a joke as well.
04:43 The best part of all of this though is that one of the Funkadactyls was Naomi, and ever
04:47 since she has smashed it.
04:48 And as of me talking, is now a WWE Women's Tag Team Champion.
04:52 And as for Brode as Clay, well you can go read about it.
04:55 So basically what happened here is that it stunned people for the wrong reasons.
04:59 Which brings us to number six, DDP.
05:01 Because if you had ever seen Diamond Dallas Page in WCW, you knew he was awesome.
05:06 He had this everyman quality to him where you just wanted to cheer him on, especially
05:10 when he started winning world titles in his 40s.
05:13 So when he arrived in WWE, they went, "actually, we see you as a guy that's going to stalk
05:18 The Undertaker and his wife".
05:21 And if Diamond Dallas Page wasn't doing this face, then something would have been
05:23 horribly wrong.
05:24 The result of all this too was Page being absolutely destroyed by the Deadman Family.
05:30 When he had his match against The Undertaker, he got whooped and eventually he faced off
05:34 against Sarah and he lost.
05:36 The bit that really stung is that Dallas took a chance on himself and he actually went over
05:40 to the WWE in 2001.
05:42 He didn't wait for his contract to expire because he wanted to grab the ball by the
05:46 horns.
05:47 And if we had just treated him in the same way, he probably could have been WWE Champion.
05:52 I will never get it.
05:53 And quite ironically, his actual debut was great because when he ripped off his balaclava
05:57 to reveal himself, I was like, "oh my gosh, it's DDP".
06:00 Then he went, "yeah man, I'm going to go stalk him".
06:02 And the whole thing was like that.
06:03 And if you want more proof that sometimes WWE miscast people, in at number 5, Lord Tensai.
06:09 I mean, what were we thinking?
06:11 Because for one, he was from America and yet had Japanese symbols all over his face.
06:16 But also two, straight away the fans went, "well no, that's not Lord Tensai, that's
06:20 Albert, that's the A-Train, that's the Hip Hop Hippo".
06:24 So everybody started chanting at him, "shave your back", which was a reference to his
06:28 old gimmick.
06:29 And that wasn't fair, because when he was Lord Tensai, he was basically hairless.
06:33 But what are you going to do?
06:34 And do not forget either that WWE had such big plans for Matt Bloom, and don't get me
06:39 wrong, he did deserve it, but this was never going to work.
06:41 He was meant to have an elongated feud with John Cena.
06:45 And did it ever really come to pass?
06:47 No, it did not.
06:48 And talking about things that totally bombed, it would be remiss of me not to mention at
06:51 number four, you know where we're going, the Goblin Eater.
06:54 And we don't need to go on about it too much because you already know the story.
06:57 At Survivor Series 1990, after weeks of bills and being told "oh my gosh, you're not
07:00 going to believe what is going to hatch out of this giant egg", Hector Guerrero came
07:05 out and he was dressed like a massive turkey.
07:07 But the best bit, and why I wanted to include it in this list, is that WWE did this because
07:12 they wanted a mascot.
07:14 They looked at Nintendo and saw Mario, and they looked at Sonic and went "oh my gosh,
07:17 Sega, they've got it down".
07:19 But why, in a million years, after what I can only assume was weeks, maybe even months
07:23 of marketing ideas, did they go "we've got it, we've got it, and we're going to
07:27 go with this monstrosity".
07:28 If I tuned into Wrestling in 2022 and I saw that, I would turn it off straight away.
07:34 With that all said, at least it wasn't done for licensing reasons, because in at three
07:39 is the Kiss Demon.
07:40 In case you're not aware, yes, your first thought is correct.
07:44 When WCW sat down with the band Kiss to try and come up with a deal for them to play a
07:48 WCW show, Kiss went "wouldn't it be great if there was a wrestler based on our music".
07:54 And WCW said "oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea".
07:57 You may also be thinking, well at least WCW made some money from this.
08:01 No, they actually paid Kiss to make this happen.
08:04 It was even written into the deal that this guy had to main event a WCW show, but thankfully
08:09 we found a workaround here.
08:11 He main evented the top of an hour on a program and they called that the main event, but believe
08:16 you me it was not.
08:17 So if you ever wondered to yourself, I wonder why WCW is not around anymore, it's because
08:23 of things like this.
08:24 The good news however is just because you have a bad debut doesn't mean it has to plague
08:27 your whole career, because in at number two it's AEW's The Butcher, The Blade and The
08:32 Buddy.
08:33 And I think we can all look back on this now and agree it didn't go to plan, because when
08:35 this trio did attack Cody Rhodes from nowhere, once again everybody scratched their heads
08:40 because they didn't even know what was going on.
08:42 And on this occasion, even Jim Ross was like, "I dunno, you ask someone else, and when
08:47 that happens, well we've already talked about it."
08:49 Look at it today though, everybody loves these guys because they're absolutely awesome.
08:53 They have put in the work and now they have that mutual respect.
08:57 And I think all three have such a bright future going forward which goes to show, even if
09:01 you drop the ball a little bit, as long as the company, the wrestlers and the promotions
09:05 all learn from it and do a better job going forward, then all will be fine.
09:10 Although that was not the case for number one, Sin Cara.
09:13 In many ways Sin Cara never got over his initial debut because the hype was crazy.
09:17 Triple H's first signing ever since he stepped into that role, he had looked down in Mexico,
09:22 seen Mr. Co and how massive he was and thought, "why don't we just replicate that in America?"
09:26 And while we tried, it never really hit.
09:29 It had gone fine when he made his first appearance and confronted Jack Swagger, but a few days
09:33 later when he debuted on Raw and was doing his big entrance, he went to jump on that
09:37 trampoline like he liked to do.
09:39 It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but he kind of clipped the top rope.
09:44 And from there, these kind of mistakes happen so much, there are YouTube accounts dedicated
09:49 to it.
09:50 Now we should all be respectful and remind ourselves this is a human being and human
09:52 beings are allowed to make errors and sometimes they're allowed to drop the ball, but this
09:56 just hampered Sin Cara's WWE career so much, eventually he got released.
10:02 And as we are talking about this, I always have to tell my Sin Cara story.
10:06 Somehow I had always missed his entrance even though I watched every single week.
10:10 I went to a live event over here in London where I couldn't see the trampoline.
10:14 When he soared over the top rope, I turned to my friend and was like, "that is the most
10:18 agile thing I've ever seen."
10:19 Then he told me and I realised I was stupid.
10:22 Do you know of any other horrible debuts that we all talk about still in wrestling?
10:26 Make sure you let us know in the comments below and don't forget to like the video,
10:28 share the video and subscribe.
10:29 Head over to whatculture.com where you can read articles like this, come say hello on
10:33 social media @whatculturewwe or @sianmella316 and we have a ton of videos, go watch one.
10:40 My name is Simon from WhatCulture, thank you for joining me as always.
10:42 And actually I had a wrestling debut once, which very annoyingly you can watch on YouTube,
10:46 and I gave the worst clotheslines of all time.
10:49 So do I understand how all of these people feel on a very, very, very small scale?
10:54 Yes.
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