WrestleMania season is easily the WWE’s best time of the year. For two and a half months—between the Royal Rumble in late January and the big dance in March/April—WWE programming, for lack of a better word, matters. Stories have some earnestness, there’s an obvious endgame to feuds new and old, everyone steps up their game, and ratings improve en route to the Super Bowl of wrestling.
This is the time of year when WWE puts their best foot forward and spotlights their biggest and best superstars. If you want to know who is hot in WWE (either with fans, with Vince, or—rarely—with both) look no further than the WrestleMania card. Conversely, if you want to know who is treading water or has fallen out of favor with the man in charge, look to the participants on the WrestleMania preshow or the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. You’ll find two different kinds of performers.
On the one hand are the regular jobbers, the enhancement talents, and the go-nowhere guys who are there to make others look good. Those are the names that casual fans probably won’t recognize. On the other hand are the “busts.” Those are the guys that, when you see them in a list, you recognize them, you remember them from “that one gimmick a couple years ago” or “that one feud with _____ current top star.”
In the long history of WWF/E there have been a lot of busts, guys who came into the company with a ton of hype and high expectations who, for one reason or another, completely flamed out. The current era is no different. Here are five such superstars-that-aren’t; guys who ought to be bigger than their spot on the card or connection to the crowd.
Bobby Lashley
Congrats to this guy for managing to make the list in two different eras. Bobby Lashley’s first WWE run was so spectacularly underwhelming that, when it was over, no one even noticed he was gone. This is despite the huge push he received in his first run with the company: Lashley won the ECW Championship, competed in a marquee match at WrestleMania 23 (featuring present and future Hall of Famers Stone Cold, Vince McMahon, and Donald Trump in ancillary roles), and entered a WWE Title feud with the toppest of top bananas, John Cena. After that, he was gone, flamed out, having accomplished nada in his brief push.
That should have been the end for Bobby, but it wasn’t. He kept working, kept grinding, and eventually found great success in Impact Wrestling, winning basically every conceivable title there. He returned to WWE with great fanfare and hype and has done nothing but underwhelm spectacularly. His highlight, so far, is as the least interesting part of a love trapezoid that also features Liv Morgan. When Liv Morgan is getting more of a crowd response than you, something has gone terribly wrong.
While it’s true that Lashley is getting a ton of TV attention, that was also true last time. He’s still a bust.
EC3
EC3, like Bobby Lashley, also began in WWE, but unlike Lashley the former Derrick Bateman never received any kind of a push before he left the company. While away, he also honed his craft in Impact Wrestling, winning numerous titles and developing a killer heel persona. His time on Impact garnered him the reputation of being a solid in-ring talent with great mic skills. WWE is a place where mediocre in-ring talents are routinely pushed over technicians based solely on their ability to work the stick; when EC3 received his chance to join WWE, he jumped on it. And why not? He had exactly what they were looking for.
Whether or not WWE realizes this has yet to be determined.
Sometimes I wonder if Vince McMahon even knows who EC3 is. Like, does he know the guy works for him or does he see him in catering and think he’s like the kid brother of a “real” employee? EC3 has been completely invisible since joining the main WWE roster. The performer with a silver tongue has been given maybe three and a half minutes of mic time…combined. He’s a bust, but unlike Bobby Lashely, he’s a bust entirely of someone else’s negligence.
Bobby Roode
Over the years there have been a ton of superstars that made solid careers for themselves having one thing to their name. It might be a finishing move (the RKO is all anyone likes Orton for, let’s be honest), or a catchphrase, or a theme song. Bobby Roode is as hot as Pluto in winter. Nothing he does in the ring generates any kind of a pop. On the rare occasions he’s given a microphone, the crowd immediately vacates to the concession stand and the audience at home checks the weather channel. He’s a limp, dead fish on dry land.
But maaaan that theme song is banging.
It’s gotten to the point where Bobby Roode is a guy known only for his theme song, and that’s not fair to someone who has had such a solid pro wrestling career. Roode was one half of BeerMoney, Inc in Impact Wrestling—
It’s here where we must stop and acknowledge a pattern: Impact Wrestling’s biggest stars haven’t amounted to squat in WWE, with the exception of guys like Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, who were equally as big elsewhere (Ring of Honor and New Japan, respectively).
—In Impact, BeerMoney, Inc (Bobby Roode and James Storm) were one of the biggest tag teams around, and part of one of the best World Title feuds in recent history: Bobby scratched and clawed and fought for the TNA World Title only to lose, then James Storm won it effortlessly, only to see Roode turn on him and win the title through underhanded tactics, turning both into main-event players. He later went to WWE (via NXT) with much fanfare and hype, instantly winning everyone over with his Glorious theme song. He soon after won the NXT Championship and was called up to the main roster where—
He’s got a name and a legacy with another company. He’s got a great theme song and a hot start in WWE, but he’s got nothing to show for it in the several years he’s been around.
That’s a bust.
Shinsuke Nakamura
To be fair, Nak’ has won multiple championships in WWE. He was one of the hottest acts in NXT during his short stint there, won the Royal Rumble, feuded for months over the WWE Title, has been a United States champ, and currently sports the Intercontinental Championship (a title he’s held for six months and counting). On paper, he’s not a bust.
Reality is not on paper, though.
Nakamura was THE man in New Japan Pro Wrestling. He was the most charismatic, most electric, most entertaining young superstar they had (and they had a ton of them). His coming to WWE was a colossal move and everyone who followed his career in NJPW agreed that only some kind of catastrophic mismanagement could derail him. If they “let Nak be Nak” he could be a megastar in North America. He debuted in NXT during Takeover Dallas in a match against Sami Zayn. I was there. It was the greatest match I’ve ever seen live. After it was over, I couldn’t imagine anything topping it.
He’s been in NXT/WWE for four years and nothing has.
In this case, much as I would love to put the blame on Vince McMahon, I blame father time. Age and wear-and-tear are the real culprits here. Sure, you can say WWE’s “creative” (a term we use loosely) dropped the ball with Nakamura being given multiple (losing) title opportunities, watering him down and demystifying him. That’s true, but it also neglects to consider how the man himself has been working three steps slower than he was a decade ago. He’s simply not the same man that he was in NJPW and, by all accounts, the former King of Strong Style is fine with being paid stupid amounts of money to work a very Safe Style of wrestling.
Nevertheless, for all the potential he had coming out of New Japan, for him to be as mediocre as he is today, I can only call him a bust.
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