- 1 day ago
Getting over is a good thing, unless Vince McMahon doesn't want you to get over. From Rusev Day to Long Island Iced Z to Fandongoing, these are 10 WWE gimmicks cancelled for being too over.
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00:00I know, you've read the title and now you're sad. Don't worry, I'm sad too.
00:04Because when something in wrestling starts to get popular, it just lights a fire under everyone's ass.
00:09We all want to know where it's going to go and then poof, it's gone, it's dead, it's over.
00:13More fool us for caring.
00:15So do you want to relive some of these? Of course you do.
00:18So hello, I am Sorry for WhatCulture, please do hit that subscribe button.
00:21And this is 10 gimmicks WWE cancelled for being too successful.
00:25Number 10 Fandango.
00:27I don't know whether WWE cancelled this one, but man, did they get it wrong in the aftermath.
00:32Before we do go on, let's do what we have to do and we shall do it together in 3, 2, 1.
00:39Sorry, I regret it.
00:41Point is, after WrestleMania 29, when Fandango incredibly defeated Chris Jericho,
00:46the crowd decided his theme music was awesome, so let's sing it all the time.
00:49I'm sure it started as a joke, but the flipping song went to the top of some music charts, so it all counts.
00:54No matter where the popularity comes from, there are many ways to capitalise on it.
00:58Sadly, WWE thought the best way was to overproduce the hell out of this reaction and turn it into almost a corporate folly,
01:05before remembering that Dango was meant to be a heel, so did whatever they could to re-establish that.
01:09It was so silly because the joy was right there, but no, we're not allowed to have fun.
01:13Go home and be miserable.
01:14The ballroom dancer never got back to these levels because you usually only ever get one shot at it.
01:18Who knows how nuts this could have gone?
01:20You can dismiss it, but we will never know.
01:24Number 9, Perry Saturn and Moppy.
01:25This is always my go-to when people say wrestling needs to be less goofy in 2022,
01:30and that we should head back to the good old days of the Attitude Era where things were more serious.
01:34Okay, so let us discuss 2001, when Perry Saturn fell in love with a mop.
01:38Yep.
01:39This happened as punishment after Saturn had been way too stiff with an opponent in the ring,
01:43so somebody came up with the idea that he could be in a relationship with a cleaning utensil.
01:47I mean, it's so absurd, it was always going to work in some fashion.
01:50This is exactly what happened when fans started to make noise when Perry and his mop came to the ring.
01:55So what did we do?
01:56End the whole thing at Unforgiven that year where Saturn and Raven's feud came to an end.
02:00I think this would have been fine too if this was because we had something else for the former WCW man to do.
02:05I doubt he enjoyed being shacked up with a mop.
02:07But no, instead he did nothing before getting released.
02:11This whole thing was bizarre.
02:13Number 8, Damien Mizdow.
02:14Now we're getting into the good stuff because you can't argue this one.
02:18Not only did Damien Sandow achieve success once with his intellectual saviour gimmick that got fans to cheer him despite the fact he was an asshole,
02:25he did it again when he teamed up with The Miz.
02:27This was even more impressive because beforehand he had been given the Money in the Bank briefcase and lost it,
02:32which never used to happen, so no one was that bothered or fool us.
02:36Why?
02:36Because Sandow became Mizdow and decided he would be a stunt double.
02:40That meant throwing himself to the ground any time The Miz took a fall, and so ridiculous it became the best thing on the show.
02:46Damien was oddly good at it.
02:48All we had to do was get to WrestleMania 31 and the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and have Mizdow throw out his mentor to finally be done with him.
02:55And while we did do that, seconds later the Big Show appeared behind him and eliminated him too.
03:00Like somebody popping your happy birthday balloon.
03:02Damien also lost to The Miz during the feud and after cutting a promo saying the stilly stuff was gone,
03:07started to pretend he was the Macho Man.
03:10That one was as bad as it sounded and honestly, what on earth were we doing?
03:14Number 7, the jilted lover Matt Hardy.
03:16I know I say this a lot, but I feel it's important.
03:18I would rather that no story or character was born out of the things we're about to talk about,
03:22and thankfully there is no beef between any of these folk and everything is good.
03:26But back in 2005, Matt Hardy found out his girlfriend Lita was cheating on him with best friend Edge,
03:31and things went bad, as of course they did.
03:33Hardy made such a public fuss he got released, but after a swell of fan support was back on TV in just a few months with an awesome angle,
03:40he was breaking into events and causing havoc, it just worked so well.
03:44All we had to do was push him right and remind the crowd how much he had been screwed over, but we didn't.
03:48Instead, the rated R superstar ruined him in the feud, meaning the guy who lost his partner and buddy also got beaten up,
03:55before he got moved to SmackDown, and we acted like none of this had happened.
03:59What?
03:59Number 6, Swing King Cesaro.
04:01Do you remember when Paul Heyman was the manager of Cesaro?
04:04That did not go to plan.
04:06It all happened after the Swiss Superman had won the first ever Andre Battle Royal,
04:09which seemed like a good sign at the time, even more so when he and expected winner Big Show shook hands.
04:14Cesaro was always going to be a better babyface than Hill too, and it felt like we all knew that,
04:19because just as he was ready to simmer away, WWE decided to pair Cesaro with Heyman,
04:23and told everyone to stop cheering.
04:25They also started to take away all of the moves the audience liked, which left us with one question,
04:29if this is what the company wanted, why did he get the big WrestleMania push?
04:34We shall never know the answer, which is why I just want to forget about it, although I did just remind you, so what an idiot I am.
04:41Number 5, the B-plus player, Daniel Bryan.
04:43So there are some asterisks to this one, but Daniel Bryan even wrote about it in his book.
04:47In 2013, when he was becoming the most popular dude imaginable, WWE tried to stop this dead.
04:53Why Batista won the Royal Rumble in 2014, and why the Yes Man wasn't even in the match, we were trying to nip this in the bud.
05:00Unfortunately for the powers that be, fans weren't going to back down with this one, and with no other choice,
05:04WWE retroactively tried to fit a story around it.
05:07In short, Bryan was flagged as a B-plus player, which was the real reason he was never able to make it to the main event,
05:12and for a while, they honestly thought this would keep him in the mid-card.
05:16Nope. The lies here come because of course Daniel overcame all of this to absolutely smash it and win the world title,
05:21so it did work out. Just don't let anybody tell you this was in the plans, because it wasn't.
05:26Thank goodness we did follow through, though.
05:28Still one of the best moments in recent memory.
05:30Before Long Island IZ Zack Ryder.
05:33Zack Ryder was so ahead of his time with this, that if somebody wanted to do the same today, they couldn't.
05:38Taking advantage of YouTube, in 2011, Ryder realised he wasn't getting anything on TV,
05:43so why shouldn't he just make his own show?
05:45It was a wonderful mishmash of insider jokes and someone being a fan,
05:48and surprise, surprise, it did the numbers.
05:50Who knew being entertaining would work?
05:52It got so much steam, fans at shows started to shout his name,
05:55and a We Want Ryder chant even happened when The Rock was in the ring.
05:59Think of that.
06:00There was a clear resistance to this at first, before the popularity was acknowledged,
06:03and sure, Zack was the US champion for a while.
06:06From then, though, my word, the poor guy was treated like he'd slighted the company.
06:11Before Long, his on-screen relationship with John Cena had resulted in Ryder being cheated on by girlfriend Eve Torres,
06:16and after we made sure he lost all the time, we moved on from this as fast as we could.
06:21It is still totally crazy, even more so when you see what Matt Cardona is doing today, I swear.
06:26Number three, Rusev Day.
06:28Right?
06:28I've been dreading this one, but we can get through it together.
06:31Alright.
06:32But yeah, I love Rusev, and I love Rusev Day so much.
06:35On one video years ago, I stuck Rusev Day signs all over my body.
06:39I can't justify that, and it is odd, but I just believed in it, and this is how I chose to express myself.
06:44You'll be shocked to hear it didn't help.
06:46All the way back in 2017, it did feel like we had finally found the breakthrough idea for Rusev,
06:51as he teamed with Aiden, English, and Lana, and told us every day was Rusev Day.
06:54It is ludicrous to say out loud, which made it even better,
06:57and as this was coming off a 10-second loss to Randy on the SummerSlam, it got people talking.
07:01It was soon passed off as a fleeting thing, but when every single venue was chanting it,
07:05buying t-shirts and calendars, it was quite clear that this is the direction to head in.
07:09So what do we do?
07:10Burned it to death.
07:11Apparently happening after Vince McMahon told the future Miro that fans were only doing this as a joke,
07:16the group was broken up, and Rusev was put with Shinsuke Nakamura.
07:20To this day, I do not know why it was such a waste, and I still cry myself to sleep about it.
07:25Number two, Bad News Barrett.
07:26In 2013, Wade Barrett was turned into Bad News Barrett, and quite literally went around telling people bad news.
07:33You could only do this in wrestling, but because he committed to it, it began to work.
07:37Fans wanted to hear what awful thing he was going to break every single week.
07:41Instead of this being a lightbulb moment for someone backstage, however,
07:44Wade was pulled aside and basically told off for getting these reactions, as he was meant to be a bad guy.
07:49As the man himself has said,
07:50He had to knock it on the head after that because too many people were joining in, but that's the point of wrestling.
07:56What kind of message that sends to the rest of the locker room to, I don't know,
08:00because it sounds like WWE would rather the crowd was bored by a heel rather than be entertained.
08:05To cut the whole gimmick short because of this too,
08:07poof, it's no wonder Barrett left when he did.
08:09What else could he possibly do after this?
08:11Number one, the Stooges.
08:13Didn't see that one coming, did ya?
08:15Well, sometimes it's good to have fun with these lists, especially when they've been so upsetting.
08:19There are loads you could pick from as well, as it's happened a lot,
08:21but it's far funnier to talk about Pat Patterson and Gerald Briscoe as Vince McMahon's lackeys,
08:26because they were awesome together.
08:27They looked like idiots constantly and were so willing to do whatever they were asked
08:30that fans started to love these two,
08:32which is why one day they started to feature less and less, I am not kidding.
08:36Briscoe recently talked about this during his podcast, and hearing that broke my heart.
08:40The straw that broke the camel's back was when Vinnie Mac saw a bunch of sides in the crowd on Raw,
08:44and from the mid-2000s, they became less of a thing.
08:47Don't try and make any sense of this either, there is none,
08:50just weird decisions by at times a very weird company.
08:53Who knows why they do any of it when they're meant to be putting smiles on people's faces.
08:58Not any other gimmicks that WWE cancelled or being too successful?
09:01Make sure you let us know in the comments below,
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09:15My name is Simon from WhatCulture, thank you very much for listening to me as always,
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