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None of these shocking or "epic" WWE comebacks worked out as planned.
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00:00Given that we are going to be talking about wrestling returns today, I would brace yourself
00:03because nobody will agree. Not even me, because look at it this way. If you are a big enough name
00:07that a promotion deems you worthy enough to bring back and hype you up, you have done something
00:12right. Can't do that just anybody. If I got brought back, everyone would be like, who the hell is this
00:16bald idiot? Of course, though, given how long wrestling has been around, on occasion it does
00:20split the audience right down the middle, and I checked with the doctor, that's not good. I mean,
00:24just wait till you hear number 11, for example. I think everybody forgot about that. So let us
00:29talk about some wrestling returns that maybe really didn't go the way we expected. Number 11,
00:34King Kong Bundy in 1994. 1994 was big in then WWF because the new generation was go. We were pushing
00:41Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, while big dudes like The Undertaker and Kevin Nash tried to make you forget
00:46about Hulk Hogan. Somewhere along the way, that edict was forgotten though, because yep, one of the
00:50Hulkster's biggest foes was brought back, and it was flubbing King Kong Bundy. His first match came on
00:55an episode of Wrestling Challenge in August, so it wasn't like we were making a big deal of this
00:59either. It wasn't actually until October when he finally turned up on Raw. He then joined up with
01:03the Million Dollar Corporation, so that was a strange comeback. Bundy himself sort of felt like he didn't
01:09want to be there. Kong was of course booked to do squashes, but it's only fair to say what Diesel
01:13was
01:14doing at the time was far more interesting than go watch the 1995 Raw Rumble. King was in there for
01:20three minutes. Nobody knew what we were doing. As he was massive, somebody soon decided he could be
01:25Undertaker's WrestleMania opponent, and yeah, it's one of those matches in the streak where you don't
01:30hear about it all that much. It's not great. This run was soon over, and there was just no oomph
01:34whatsoever. I suppose King Kong Bundy was just of his time, but very sadly, the mid-90s wasn't it.
01:40Everybody then did move on quite fast, but let's never forget what he did before this. I mean,
01:45the fact we still remember his name kind of sums it up. Number 10, Rick Rude in 1997.
01:49This one is a mixed bag, and I think it all depends how old you were, because I have pretty
01:54good memories of Rick Rude being in the WWF in 1997, because he was the serious part of the
01:59original D-Generation X. Triple H and HBK would sort of shove things down their pants as Rude just
02:05yelled at everybody, because Rick was so intimidating, I guess it kind of worked. The reason it fell into
02:10odd territory, however, is because Vince McMahon sort of hit the brakes on it. After some microphone time,
02:15Rude became almost a mute, and just as it felt like it was all settling down, Rick left. Yep,
02:20he was one of the few that saw what happened to Brat Hart in the 1997 Survivor Series, and he
02:24was so
02:25disgusted, he walked. Went back to WCW. Really, it was a difficult period for Rude, because he had
02:30cashed in his Lloyd of London insurance policy, meaning he wasn't able to bump. I think most fans
02:35likely would have expected this given his run beforehand, so yeah, it's another one that didn't
02:39really hit the mark. Nobody really mentions his name when chatting about DX, and outside of that
02:44group, well, he didn't do much. But much like Kim Con Bundy, let's not forget that Rick Rude was a
02:49flippin' legend. Number 9, Jeff Jarrett in 1997. The WWF-Jeff Jarrett relationship, to sum up in one
02:55word, was crazy. Just go and watch the clip on that Raw Nitro simulcast when Vince McMahon specifically
03:01calls Double J out. He still hadn't forgiven him for past transgressions. Jeff still found his way back
03:06to Raw on the 20th of October 1997, and kind of went full shoot promo. He had been in WCW
03:12and decided
03:13that it sucked, as did Eric Bischoff screw that guy. It was kind of funny, because of years prior
03:18to this, he had walked out on the World Wrestling Federation, because he wasn't happy with his
03:22character or current direction. The interview itself was slightly miscast, because the WWF audience
03:27remembered him as the over-the-top Jeff. So hearing him go after Brat Hart, Shawn Michaels,
03:31and Steve Austin, well, you needed to warm to that. You can't just say some names. The worst part for
03:37Jarrett is the camera then cuts to Vince McMahon on commentary. And I tell you, my friends,
03:41that man does not look impressed at all. Soon after, Jeff was part of the bizarre NWA invasion
03:46story that nobody remembers, and there's a reason for that. And after a while, it was quite clear,
03:51Jarrett was not going to be cemented in the main event scene. That's why soon after this,
03:56he left the company again. So you should go and watch this and remember that when Jeff did leave
04:00the WWF first time around, he was doing that weird song storyline with the roadie, and then he
04:05returned and did this? I have no idea what was happening. Number 8, Christian in 2009.
04:11This wasn't even Christian's fault, and it still makes me mad. It's another reason it is good that
04:15AEW exists. Finally got a company that told you, by the way, he's great. Even Christian knew his worth
04:21as he left WWE in 2005 to prove he could be a top guy in TNA. It was quite the
04:26big decision,
04:26all things considered. And yeah, he was awesome as the world champion over there. I think a few people
04:31finally realized at the very least he was above where Vince McMahon had put him. That's why when
04:35he re-signed in 2009, there was some buzz, and WWE squashed him instantly. For starters, he came back
04:41on the 10th of February at ECW, and we all know the deal with that brand. Announcer Todd Christian
04:46was also told to no-sell this too, so when Christian walked out, Todd reacted like your mum after you
04:51finally decided to wake up at the weekend. Oh well, look who it is. Jack Swagger, who was in the
04:56ring,
04:56oversold this as well, and it just gets worse when you do some digging. Feels like Christian was
05:01going to be the surprise in the Jeff Hardy and Edge feud, but when that leaked, Matt Hardy turned
05:05on his brother instead, before Cage ended up on ECW. So flippin' poor. Thankfully in 2010, he made his
05:11way to Raw and eventually became the world champion. And while that also felt a little bit like it was
05:16done through gritted teeth, Christian just kept proving he could handle it. WWE got this so wrong,
05:21and even if the idea was to bolster a third brand, Christian was simply better than that. Feels like
05:26he's made that point, especially over the last few years. There's a modern day goat.
05:31Number 7, Kurt Angle in 2017. Kurt Angle himself has talked about this, and really WWE got it the
05:36wrong way round. You can understand why they were cautious given Angle's history, but when he did
05:41re-sign in 2017, he was still pretty damn active on the independency. He looked pretty good too,
05:46he just needed to keep the momentum up. Instead, when he did arrive after WrestleMania 33,
05:50he was announced as the new Raw General Manager. Well, that felt odd. By the time we finally got
05:56into the in-ring action, his body was so run down, he just could not do what he wanted. I
06:01mean,
06:01you could quite literally see he was struggling. Because he is Kurt Angle, he still found wonderful
06:05moments such as that Ronda Rousey debut at WrestleMania 34. But looking back, it really does
06:10feel that if Angle still wanted to wrestle, we should have just done it full-on straight away.
06:13We didn't. Went back to being an on-screen authority figure, and that just wasn't the correct fit.
06:17It was still nice to have him back because Kurt deserved a second run, but it is fair to say
06:21the peak at the end of his career happened in TNA. My gosh, you should go watch some of those
06:25matches too. If you are under any illusions about how good the Olympic gold medalist was,
06:30pfft, right here, the man was flubbing ridiculous. Number 6, Batista.
06:34Now really, Batista's return in 2014 was a lot of fun, we just had to sort out that initial mess
06:39first.
06:40The best part is Big Dave knew that WWE were about to screw up. He told The Office he should
06:45come
06:45back as a heel after looking at the modern landscape, but nope, creative knew best.
06:49They did not. Either way, the animal was back on the 20th of January Raw, and people were excited
06:54to see him. When we got to the Raw Rumble days later, however, he was booked to win it, and
06:58yeah,
06:58this was 2014, when fans just wanted to see Daniel Bryan become the guy. This wasn't that,
07:04so boo, or blue, T-ster, was a whole thing. It meant instantly this became another fight against
07:09the fans, and that had just been the story of 2013. WWE acting like they know what they're doing
07:15as the audience refuses to go with it. If Batista had just returned, soaked up the cheers,
07:19and then turned intentionally, boom, easy peasy, we can never keep things that damn simple.
07:24Do not forget who did the honors for Daniel at WrestleMania 32. Batista always understood
07:28the industry, and really management should have given him more credit. WWE still ignored the obvious
07:33for a while, and went forward with Dave vs. Randy Orton in that main event. Eventually,
07:37they had no choice, Bryan was going to have to be included, but all of this could have been so
07:41much better in hindsight. However, shout out to the animal, that dude is underrated.
07:47Number 5, Brock Lesnar in 2025. So let's take the elephant out of the room,
07:51even though of course it has to tie in. It's not the best idea to bring a wrestler back who
07:54was
07:54taken off the road for two years, because they were allegedly named in a lawsuit. It seems to make
07:59sense to let that play out first, then you don't have to get any very difficult questions.
08:03This was not easy. On top of that though, what even was this?
08:06John Cena and Cody Rhodes had just gone to war in the SummerSlam main event, and it ruled.
08:11Cena dropped the WWE title back to Cody 2 in a proper passing of the torch moment,
08:15and that was enough. Seeing the past and the present embracing each other to close the second
08:19biggest pay-per-view of the year, it's wonderful. Because WWE has become obsessed with the big
08:23surprise though, Brock's music did hit. He stormed the ring and laid out John with the F5,
08:28then he vanished for months. That was the other problem, because it instantly reminded you why
08:32so many people were done with Lesnar years prior. If you can get a limited appearance deal,
08:37I've no issue with it. But the story should never be, I'm back for five minutes. Then everyone
08:41is going to go quiet. I mean, let's just take wrestling as if it was the real deal. If Brock
08:46wakes up one day and decides he wants revenge against Cena, why would he do one attack and then
08:50go away again? He would not. The story for Cena, Lesnar at Wrestlepalooza suffered due to this as well.
08:56It's no good. 2016 booking in 2025. Don't do that. Number four, Shane Douglas. In 1990,
09:04Shane Douglas was basically a rookie who had a brief run in the WWF. It was clear that he was
09:08not going to get much at the time. So he went to WCW and ECW and made some noise. It
09:13worked. He got
09:14a name for himself. By 1995, Shane felt like an up-and-comer, so he got re-signed by the
09:19World
09:19Wrestling Federation. And man, talk about wrong place, wrong time. It's hard to think of anyone who could
09:24have actually made this work, but yep, Douglas was told he was going to be the dean. I mean,
09:29that literally too. He would be a wrestling teacher and grade opponents' report cards.
09:34It was the new generation era where everybody had to have a job gimmick for some reason.
09:38And poor Shane got educator. As soon as this started in July, we all knew the ceiling was
09:43very low. It got worse for him too because he ran afoul of the click and yeah. In the mid
09:47-90s,
09:48you couldn't survive the WWF locker room if you made enemies of those guys. They would make sure you
09:52weren't going to hang around. And by the end of the year, Douglas was gone again. And it really
09:56felt like this bothered him for years. And I do get that. Shane wasn't given anything to work with.
10:01I mean, just look at the gimmick once again too. Douglas had made a name for himself by being a
10:05workhorse. And now he had to ham it up like he was teaching kids. I can't believe he was happy.
10:10And there were even rumours that Yokozuna got in his case too due to mismatches because of an injury.
10:15Feels like there's a lot more to that story. Given what Shane would go on to do at ECW,
10:19I don't think this time period in the WWF was for him. Which was a shame because they,
10:23of course, were the big game in town. He still eventually made it work. But yeah,
10:27this was another setback. And I'm sure Douglas didn't expect any of it when he was readying to
10:31come back. Was not great. Number three, Bret Hart in 2010. I struggle with this one because as a
10:36lifelong Bret Hart fan, I think I probably needed it. I remember when the news broke that Bret would
10:41be on Raw and I have never been so excited. This felt like the forbidden fruit and hell freezing over
10:46all rolled into one. How exactly is this going to happen? It was almost 13 years after the Montreal
10:51Screwjob 2. So the sheer intrigue was huge. WWE then ruined it a bit by having the hitman come out
10:57to the Hart Foundation theme as opposed to his original song. And no, I'm not over it. How do you
11:02get the small things wrong sometimes? He also made amends with Shawn Michaels, which honestly felt
11:05impossible at one stage when Vince McMahon was here too. And he kicked Bret right in the balls.
11:10That was fine as well. It made sense. They would feud together. Rather than use the very real
11:14situation though that had captivated fans for years, WWE felt like they had to invent new ideas,
11:20including a hit and run. That's right, we were getting car accidents. From there, I just think
11:24we wanted to give Hart the best run possible and even made him the US champion. But Bret wasn't
11:29clear to take bumps, so all of it was a bit iffy. The WrestleMania match with Vince was also strange,
11:33but again, sometimes I think you've just got to be happy we got something that's better than nothing.
11:38Now a lot of this was overbooked and these days, I don't know. It was an important moment,
11:42but it's also really strange. Hart seems to hate WWE again today, so who knows? At least he's
11:47always honest. Number two, The Ultimate Warrior in 1996. For some reason, Vince McMahon always wanted
11:52to bring The Ultimate Warrior back, even though they fell out every single time. Go Google this
11:57today. They just didn't get on, but then a period of time would go by and we'd try again. The
12:01real
12:01life Jim Hellwig was back for WrestleMania 12 on the 31st of March, and it always makes me laugh.
12:06He ruined Triple H in seconds, and fans today still go, well, that was punishment due to the
12:11curtain call incident. That's interesting, because the curtain call incident happened months after
12:16this. I don't think they tied in. It actually came down to the fact that the WWF needed somebody in
12:21the midcard to make The Ultimate Warrior look like an absolute monster during his comeback.
12:24So yeah, these two were put together. Although you can go and read more about this, it just sounded
12:28like Warrior wasn't going to play ball. After this squash match, The Ultimate One also moved on to a
12:33truly odd feud with Goldust. And guess what happened come July? That's right, he was gone again,
12:38because he no-showed several live events, which is what happened before, which is also why originally
12:42Vince McMahon got mad at him. Now I don't necessarily think the presentation was dated even though we
12:46were in the new generation once again of the mid-90s, but when you had Shawn Michaels and Brat
12:51Hart doing their things, but there was only so long this was going to last. The WWF and The Ultimate
12:55Warrior then fell out over his comic books too, and then, even in late 1997, they made another play to
13:01bring him back. They must have totally forgotten about this one. It was a little bit of a disaster.
13:05Number one, Ronda Rousey in 2022. So once again, I actually think this is a debate that needs to
13:10be sat down and talked about as opposed to be thrown at you at the end of a list, but
13:14you can
13:14still see it on social media today. A lot of people were not impressed when Ronda Rousey came back to
13:18the WWE in 2022. I mean, few can claim to have had a better debut match than Ronda because her
13:23mixed
13:23tag at WrestleMania 34 was brilliant. And it's why when she exited WWE stage right in 2019, most people
13:30were excited for her big comeback. She was awesome. Let's not pretend she didn't open a bunch of doors for
13:34the women. She did. It would finally happen at the Women's Raw Rumble in 2022 when Rousey walked
13:39out at number 28, and not only did she win the thing, but it certainly seemed like she was setting
13:43herself up for a program with Charlotte Flair. The issue that I think at least 50% of the fanbase
13:48had, though, is that Ronda Rousey was told to lean into the babyface side of wrestling and smile all the
13:52time. And while people didn't want that, they wanted the Ronda they'd seen in UFC who was going to
13:57totally flub you up. We also soon got to arenas as well, where obviously the fans decided they were
14:01going to boo Ronda Rousey, and Ronda didn't like that. So all of a sudden, you had a good guy
14:05in
14:05the ring that was telling the crowd to go away, and that riled the crowd up. So they came back
14:09at
14:09Ronda and said, well, no, why don't you go away first? And yes, I've turned that into a child's
14:13television show, but hopefully you get what I'm saying. If not, once again, Google, you will see.
14:18I think ultimately, when you just go through her second run, it wasn't as good as the first,
14:22although I will die on the hill that her match at SummerSlam with Shayna Baszler was pretty damn good.
14:26It just got meddled around with by management, which took away the violence that quite clearly Rousey
14:30and Shayna wanted to bring to the thing. But once again, the fact that I have to make my position
14:33very clear kind of sums it up. I think if you ask most people, they would agree, maybe it was
14:38a
14:38little bit of a letdown. Once again, I always think you have to caveat this with you cannot take away
14:42the importance Ronda had to not only women's MMA, but sports in general, and that WrestleMania 35 main
14:48event probably wouldn't have happened without her. At the same time, it kind of feels like maybe a round
14:52three would help to pour water on round two, or maybe we just never do it again.
14:56Know of any other WWE turns that immediately backfired? You can let us know in the
15:00comments below before you liked the video, share the video, and subscribe. You can also click the
15:04video on the screen where we will talk about even more wrestling returns, because it is the best
15:07thing about sports entertainment. Otherwise, my friends, have a lovely day. Speak to you soon.
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