00:00It must suck to have been born at the wrong time, to execute a kickass guitar solo, to
00:04deafening silence while remaining convinced that their kids are going to love it.
00:08Wrestling's no different, the WWE style has changed so often over the years, from the
00:12baby oil drenched juice assisted super Adonises of the 80s, to the cartoonish and colourful
00:17characters of the new generation, the grungy foul mouthed lunatics of the attitude era,
00:21the amateur leaning unhinged hosses of the ruthless aggression era, to the work great
00:25lauded indie darlings of the modern era.
00:27Some stars found great success being in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time,
00:32whilst others saw their shine dimmed by either being a throwback to a bygone time, or light
00:36years ahead of their time.
00:38Here are the 10 WWE stars who wrestled in the wrong era.
00:41And hey if you're watching this and haven't yet subscribed to Parts Fun Known, if you could
00:44hit that subscribe button it would really help out the channel, more so than you know.
00:48Thanks everyone.
00:4910.
00:50The Revival, The Golden Era
00:51I mean The Revival's whole shtick is that they were a throwback, that's why they're
00:55called The Revival.
00:56And hey FDR are going to have a great legacy of matches in AEW, but oh man with their intense
01:01dedication to tag psychology, roughneck southern brawler style and most of all a keen awareness
01:06of the rules and how and when to break them, The Revival would have killed in the 80s, back
01:10when tag team wrestling really mattered.
01:11In the first ever Survivor Series in 1987, 10 tag teams competed in a single match, all
01:17with names, gear and gimmicks. WWE could only dream of having 10 proper tag teams today,
01:22that's how far the division has fallen, at least on the main roster.
01:25The Revival could have mixed up with The Heart Foundation, The Rockers, Demolition, The British
01:30Bulldogs and of course, The Brain Busters, if the universe doesn't Spider-Man meme itself
01:34into oblivion first.
01:359.
01:36Ken Shamrock Ruthless Aggression Era Ken Shamrock missed out on Brock Lesnar by a few years.
01:42Ken Shamrock missed out on Kurt Angle by a few months.
01:45I want to see both of those matches so bad.
01:48Ken Shamrock found a fair bit of success during his run in the early half of the Attude era,
01:52but man when WWE gradually slid into a higher level of work rate with the main event promotion
01:56of Angle, Benoit, Eddie, Mysterio and Brock, having Ken Shamrock as part of the Smackdown Ruthless
02:01Aggression landscape would have been fan-fucking-tastic.
02:03He would have eaten John Cena and sent him back to West Newbury with his jorts pretzeled
02:08up in his goddamn colon.
02:10The World's Most Dangerous Man was never the best promo, always felt a little out of
02:13his depth in the Attude era's gross-out characterful excess, but as the Olympic wrestling machine
02:18ushered in a new era of what main eventers could and should deliver, WWE Champion Ken Shamrock,
02:24I could see it.
02:258.
02:26Dean Malenko The Current Era Roses are red, violets are blue,
02:29Malenko is great, these things are true.
02:31Dean Malenko was one of the great unsung heroes of WCW, a top cruiserweight in a land where
02:36the big boys played.
02:38Hopes were high that he would make a splash in WWE, but much like Shamrock, his stiff upper
02:42lip and Iceman demeanour rendered him boring in the eyes of WWE creative who basically gave
02:47up on him after the whole creeping up on Leta like a dad at a Carly Rae Jepsen concert thing
02:51failed to get him over like Rover.
02:53His insane technical ability, speed and fluidity of movement would have made him a superstar
02:58in NXT and an asset to SmackDown's current landscape of super workers like Cesaro, Seth
03:03Rollins and Daniel Bryan.
03:04I mean Dean Malenko makes a running power slam look like a world ender, he is the best, he's
03:09the best.
03:107.
03:11Aja Kong Current Era
03:12In 1995, Aja Kong made something of a big splash, eliminating four women, including champion
03:17Alundra Blaze and being the sole survivor at Survivor Series.
03:21She was a terrifying hoss, even going as far as putting the heebie-jeebies into management
03:25because quote, that's not how women are supposed to wrestle.
03:28Just watch her crack Alundra in the face.
03:30In the epitome of wrestling at the wrong time, the initial plan was for Kong to challenge Blaze
03:35for the Women's Championship at the 96 Rumble, but in the wake of Alundra defecting to WCW
03:39trash in the belt, WWE responded in kind by putting the entirety of its women's division
03:44in the bin.
03:45Sorry about that Kong.
03:46Instead, she would have fit in perfectly in the post-revolution era of women's wrestling,
03:50a face-painted, stiff-working, unsettling monster with a completely different silhouette
03:56to 90% of the women in WWE she could have cleaned up.
04:006.
04:01The Great Carly Golden Era
04:02Poor Great Carly.
04:04A special attraction, completely robbed of his specialness by being thoroughly overexposed
04:08on weekly TV.
04:10Also, the fact he couldn't really walk didn't help, but you don't need to be able to walk
04:12to make bank in the golden era, as late career Andre the Giant will attest.
04:15The whole Great Carly is World Champion hoo-ha, remember when he was World Champion, remember,
04:20he was in 2007, remember, oh no.
04:22That would have been so much more palatable in the time of the Andres and the King Kong Bundys,
04:27a foreign monster with a gobby foreign manager going on an undefeated streak.
04:31The Vice Grip would have been so much more believable as a finisher back in the day, would
04:35have been one of the most feared moves on the planet.
04:38Shrouded in the camp mystery of golden era 80s WWE, someone for Hulk Hogan to polish off
04:43in the main event of Wrestlemania, Hulk out of the Vice Grip, give him another iconic slam
04:47big payday for everyone.
04:495.
04:50The Viking Raiders New Generation Era
04:52Oh man, how did WWE screw up the war Viking Raiders machine?
04:55A bunch of huge dudes who can move like lightning with killer chemistry and the kind of beards
04:59that launch ships.
05:00The problem was that their gimmick was almost too strong.
05:03Viking, heard WWE, dashing out and heading to the nearest Uncle Smithy's costume shopper
05:08tawdry nicknack bollocks and returning with all the Norse bullsh** that their little arms
05:12could carry.
05:13Thing is, that kind of camp colourful ostentation that shows up as cringe-worthy under today's
05:17harsher spotlight was all the rage in the pastel smeared 90s.
05:20With an OTT silhouette, a uniquely larger than life gimmick, in the early to mid 90s the Viking
05:25Raiders could have inherited the Legion of Doom's crown of hyper-tough, hyper-violent face-painted
05:30scary boys and hell, at least it would have saved us from men on a mission WWE tag team
05:35champions.
05:36Also, we could have had Viking Raiders vs the Steiner brothers and I want that more than
05:39I want a vaccine.
05:404.
05:41Dean Ambrose Attitude Era
05:43Or in other words, Jon Moxley I guess.
05:45For real though, if only Dean Ambrose was allowed to go full Pillman in WWE, what we could
05:49have seen.
05:50The man has a scary amount of drawling charisma on the mic.
05:54And I am fascinated by the idea of Dean Ambrose but without a script in his hand and the freedom
05:58to be as 90s edgy as he wanted.
06:01Genuinely, he could have sat right in the middle of the Venn diagram of Cactus, Jack, Raven
06:05and Pillman.
06:06A dank-haired, crazy-eyed, barbed wire-wrapped monster with the kind of hypnotic freewheeling
06:11promos that suggest monsters under the skin.
06:14And also, and this may be an unpopular opinion, but he probably wouldn't have pushed a hot
06:17dog cart to the ring, beat up a dummy with random tools or accidentally electrocuted
06:21himself with a telly like a massive f***ing plankton.
06:24Just a thought.
06:253.
06:26Ivory Current Era
06:27I mean we could have populated this entire list with women who were super talented and
06:31would have absolutely burned it down today.
06:33Melina, Beth Phoenix, Victoria, Jazz, Molly Holly, bloody hell AJ Lee left the big dub months
06:39before the revolution and she was one of the most fully formed characters around.
06:43AJ Lee vs Sasha Banks?
06:45Yes, please, but of all the women to feel the most out of time, it's got to be Ivory.
06:50Incredibly talented, ace-in-the-ring Ivory, whose biggest moments in the Attude Era saw
06:54her thoroughly ruined by Chyna at WrestleMania X7 as one part of a sex-obsessed purity cult,
06:59but saddest of all saw her being pinned for the WWE Championship by goddamn 76-year-old
07:05fabulous Moolah, but hey, 1999 was a rough year for everyone.
07:10Ivory was routinely embarrassed and underused, most often outclassed by more well-known and
07:14boobier opponents, but going back and looking at her work, hell, even decades later looking
07:18at her appearance in Evolution, Ivory was one of the best in the game for a time, with
07:21the potential to be a great character as her work as superb heat magnet in RTC proved.
07:26She would have been a great hand in today's post-revolution women's division.
07:302. CM Punk Attitude Era
07:32This might be a controversial pick, not least because controversy follows CM Punk around
07:36like a lovesick puppy.
07:37You could argue that the pipe bomb was an indication of someone who was in exactly the right place
07:41at the right time, an insider indie tweener tearing back the surface level artifice of
07:46wrestling at the height of its staleness, but also, Punk in the Attitude Era would have
07:49been dope, and that's the bottom line, because Pepsi Phil said so.
07:54CM Punk, however you think of him as a wrestler, is one of the greatest mic workers of all time.
07:59He is.
08:00And just saying, the preachy, straight-edged persona work gangbusters against Jeff Hardy in
08:04the PG Era.
08:05Just try and imagine that gimmick, supported by that level of charisma and in-ring acumen,
08:09in the Attitude Era against, let's say, Stone Cold Steve Austin.
08:13A few of the Attitude Era's favourite things are mic workers capable of dropping unscripted
08:17bombshells, creepy sanctimonious cults, and demonising anyone who had a temerity to encourage
08:22people to stop stuffing their bodies with poison.
08:24It's true, it's damn true.
08:26And number one, Braun Strowman New Generation Era
08:30In 1995, Vincent Kennedy McMahon would have tap danced across an ocean of broken glass
08:35to get someone like Braun Strowman in the mid-90s.
08:38After the steroid scandal purged all of the most muscle-bound boys from his merry-go-round
08:42of ground and pound, he scrambled for other forms of big to populate his main event, which
08:47translated to tall or heavy.
08:50Someone like Braun Strowman, able to achieve that combination of special attraction height,
08:55body-oddy-oddy without the gas, and crazy speed, all while being more than serviceable
08:59on the mic, man, the world would have been his if WCW hadn't gobbled him up first.
09:05Braun's gone off the boil now, but his best work in the company always had an air of throwback
09:09about it.
09:10A ludicrous cartoon carnival strongman performing extraordinary feats of strength, watching Strowman
09:16flipping an ambulance blew people's minds in 2017.
09:19In the New Generation Era, that kind of angle would have guaranteed him a world title run.
09:24And that's our list.
09:25Which wrestlers do you think would have found more success in a different time?
09:28Let us know below and don't forget to like and share this video around if you enjoyed
09:32it and subscribe to Parts of Unknown for more great wrestling content and never forget to
09:36jam that jam.
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