Luckiest/Unluckiest Wrestlers Ever
 

So, for this week's podcast, we're looking to discuss various wrestlers that you think may have been the luckiest or unluckiest in wrestling history, and would like your nominations for these distinctions and why you feel they're good candidates. Obviously it's a career focused discussion (so not wanting to incorporate deaths into this), so whether it's people who you think got a bum deal by bad circumstances repeatedly, or somebody in the right place and time and had a far better career than their skills deserved, we'd like to hear your suggestions on both.

As always, the best suggestions will be read on the show and you'll be credited accordingly, so what do you think?

EDIT - The show discussing your nominations for Luckiest and Unluckiest Wrestlers Ever is now online and available to listen to at the following link: http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean....stlersEver.mp3

Kennedy is always the one who comes to mind. There was the wellness policy violation that put a halt to that. Outside of that though, there was the issue of them rushing MITB off of him and then finding out his injury wasn't as serious as they thought. He comes back for a while and seems in line for another major push before getting injured again. He comes back from THAT injury looking like he's gonna be a major face and it lasts all of one match before that weird Orton debacle leads to his firing. Never seen a guy have so many chances to become a major star get thwarted JUST at the worst moment.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...d_Hassan_2.jpg Suppose to win tile and then London happens then gone

Marc posted the guy I want going to post, rumored to be winning the title, if the attack happened on any other day (Or didn't happen at all) the character would have continued to grow.

Wade Barrett has been pretty unlucky as far as his injuries go... seems like he would always gain steam, get injured, come back, get some steam, get injured, etc. repeat.

And now he is a jobber.

Dolph Ziggler getting injured around his World Title reign where he had Big E/AJ was also pretty unlucky and pretty much killed off his run.

Daniel Bryan is the first that comes to mind. Had a long ride to get back to the title and have two signature wins at Wrestlemania, only to get injured, drop the belt, and get bumped back to the midcard upon return due to now seemingly being labeled injury prone.

Lex Luger. Gets a mega push as Hogan's would be replacement, but gets a count out win at Summer Slam, dual win at the Rumble, and screw job dq at Mania, then off to WWF oblivion until finally leaving the following year.

Damian Sandow. The end of the brand split ruined any potential he had to be a viable upper mid card talent. Wins MITB only months before WWE decides they want a unified, singular heavyweight title, and Sandow gets fed to Cena, loses, and slowly and now surely drifted into near non existence.

Dolph Ziggler. Gets a huge moment the night after Mania in winning, legitimately this time, the WHC, and quickly suffers a concussion and that's the end of any semblance of being even a quasi main eventer. Much like Bryan, he may now be leveled injury prone and won't ever be relied on to get to the main event.

Plus Sandow builds himself back up as Mizdow and then disappears

Owen Hart's entire career was bad luck, from his team with Koko making him look silly, to being in Bret's shadow, never reaching the levels everyone knew he deserved, and finally his death. Just damn tragic.

Good point. Takes a shit gimmick and gets it obscenely over, and gets to go nowhere with it.

Magnum TA

Matt Cappotelli.

Famous for co-winning a Tough Enough season and the vicious beating Bob Holly gave him on the show. Ended up being the start of a string of injuries and bad luck that lead to him never getting called up from development. To make matters worse, career got cut abruptly because of a brain tumor.


Cena might be the luckiest in modern times just because he went from someone on the verge of getting released by the WWE to becoming their mega star. All because of one random encounter Steph had backstage catching him rapping or doing something that really impressed her and became the basis for his Thuganomics gimmick.

I'd like to suggest Jake Roberts as a victim of bad luck. He was doing well in Georgia when the territory was bought by the WWF; his program with Hogan fell apart when the fans went the wrong way; his program with Warrior fell apart when Warrior was fired/suspended/what have you (the specifics can be debated certainly, but he definitely got the short end of the stick there;</>) and he had a fat contract with WCW torpedoed because Bill Watts has some kind of butthurt for the man. Also you guys have mentioned his awful Wrestlemania record, which maybe really isn't "luck" but he definitely didn't get any breaks when it came to those matches.

As a footnote, no one is going to say that Austin was the unluckiest wrestler ever, but he definitely had a few unlucky incidents that cut his career short. Honestly his career had a lot of good and bad luck to it; he came around at the most opportune time when he was exactly what the fans wanted, and in a company that had suffered horribly as far as having decent opponents for its top babyfaces, he was damn lucky that he had the Rock, Foley, and Triple H to work with.

For the luckiest, I'd say Eric Bischoff. He played up his opportunities well, but getting the VP job was fantastic luck in that he was exactly what they were looking for at the time (maybe it could be better said that he WASN'T what they WEREN'T looking for.) And then the nWo angle was an enormous stroke of luck, starting with being able to grab Hall & Nash at the same time, and then with all of the maybes and buts about who the "third man" would be, the fact that Hogan's heel turn went as well as it did was borderline miraculous. I think it was on an Austin podcast where Nash recalls telling Bischoff upon his coming to WWE something like "you're going to be so proud of yourself when you realize that you almost beat THIS company with what you had in WCW." It might not have lasted but Bischoff had a horseshoe wedged between his asscheeks for a few years at least.

The argument against jake being unlucky and someone like kennedy,hall, hardy they did the drugs. Nobody forced them. Unlucky for jake would also be when he was supposed to take over for Patterson with creative and vince backed out

Was it that that led to the Smackdown Halloween special where he dressed up as vanilla ice?

Luckiest I may go with ultimate warrior. Came at a time when physique mattered more than wrestling talent and work ethic. Did the ultimate no no's of holding up a promoter and no showing advertised events and still kept getting vince's forgiveness. Also got paid a buttload by wcw to come in and suck.

Think so. Was pretty much failing as a face with the Prototype gimmick and then floundering a bit with his heel turn I think before getting one more chance that ended up striking gold.

You could argue that Kennedy and Hardy were unlucky enough to be born sans the brains to not fuck up when the company was trying to make something of them. :D

Him and a lot of people. Hell Lanny Poffo got paid a buttload to go to WCW and do literally nothing.

Also - crass as this may sound - Jake Roberts and Scott Hall are lucky to be alive.

Triple H as arguably the luckiest wrestler ever. No doubt he was an above average talker who was good in the ring. But he also lucked out in latching onto his now infamous group of friends. He eventually plays a clear second fiddle to the far more talented HBK, who then injureshis back, allowing Triple H to take the ball and run.

Then Austin and Rock leave, and Triple H goes on to have 7 additional main event matches at Mania, more than Rock and Austin combined. During that span, he was also the main focus on Raw during the brand split, where as big or bigger name talent like Taker, Lesnar, Guerrero and Angle were on the other show.

Luckiest: Brutus Beefcake. He got put in a team with Greg Valentine and a run with the tag belts where he basically stood on the apron 90% of the time. Due to being Hogan's buddy, he kept on getting pushes despite being atrocious. If anyone disputes this claim: Brutus Beefcake headlined STARRCADE!!!!

His friends sought him out,not the other way around. Hhh paid his dues and loves the business. His spot wasn't luck

While hhh jobbed to alex wright on the same show. Excellently run company

The first that came to mind for "unlucky" was Magnum TA. But putting tragedies like that aside, I think Ken Doane/Kenny Dykstra had some bad luck. He gets called up really young, has a really bad gimmick, has his fiance start sleeping with the biggest star in the company -- all before you reach full adult maturity.

Mr. Kennedy is a good one. There are a few that I'm always thinking about, since they gain steam just as something that squanders that comes about too.

Oh, how about Val Venis? He gets a hot gimmick out the gate, but it's not really the most serious thing in the world. But when it comes time to turn him heel and give him a serious push, his denouncing of pornography coincides with the formation of the Right to Censor -- who, yes, get heat -- but lack any real sort of credible traction. Then he returns with a damaged goods gimmick, gets a bit of success, turns heel, then gets hurt. Then he turns face and then the PG era kicks in.

And I'm going to throw out "anybody that came from OVW under John Laurinaitis' run as Head of Talent Relations".

Lucky? Really have to say John Cena. He was rising up the ranks when no one was really competing with what he could offer, and Brock had left the company. Cena would have still been a top guy, but I wonder if he would have been the top guy.

Unlucky is anyone who isn't John Cena in the John Cena era. :shifty:

Ken doane and cena both unlucky for having that roast beef vag on their resumes

Would Orton count? Felt like he should have been a bigger deal than he is. Seems his own douche baggery as well as injuries and poor booking derailed him from being a bigger star.

Lucky Cannon

Paying his dues and loving the business is unrelated. He was never as big a star as HBK, Rock or Austin yet he managed to headline more Wrestlemanias due circumstance more than star power.

Maven. Won the 1st Tough Enough, and ended up picking up 5 Hardcore Championships from 2001-2005, but despite being great at his craft, he never got a World title push.

DDP in the very late WWF era. Has a match on SD! in, I think April 2002 and gets injured and is forced to retire because his own insurance company says if he continued to wrestle, they'd drop him from coverage. It was all covered on an episode of Confidential. I just think there's a huge chance that had he been able to come back he may have had 1 or 2 WWE/WHC runs.

Bret Hart spending his whole career in WWF/E being injury free, then soon after going to WCW getting kicked in the head by Greenberg, effectively ending his career, is pretty unlucky. Not saying he's the unluckiest guy out there but that one incident is pretty bad.

Ric Flair - luckiest

I mean come on, he survived a plane crash

I was gonna mention that but yes you're correct.

Does "survived a plane crash" constitute good fortune or bad fortune?

I'm going to try to think outside of the box here. I'm going to say Arn Anderson is one of the more unlucky guys in wrestling, as far as his career goes. His career ending injury/surgery came at a time where he could have played a fairly pivotal role in the nWo angle. I mean, he probably would have been buried, but he was always so god damned good as a worker, that one must believe at some point, he could have picked up quite a few more main event pay days. He also seemed to be destined to be stuck in the roll of "always the bridesmaid".

Maybe I'm the unlucky one with Arn's injury, (As are many Canadian wrestling fans who never got much NWA or WCW) because as a life long WWE fan, I never got to see enough of Arn, and when I finally got a chance to see Nitro on a regular basis, he was retired.

Mabel was the most lucky. He was always the stinking, drizzling shits, and charisma vacuum, but won a king of the ring, and had a job for what seemed like eons. Fuck Mabel.

Also, tell Carl he is my inspiration... not really sure why, he just is.

Interesting views on Arn Anderson.

Died in a plane crash or injured so bad he couldn't wrestle ever again would have been bad.

Also consider that because of the injuris in the crash he had to change his style of wrestling. If he hadn't been in the crash he probably wouldn't have changed his style and who knows how his career would have gone. He wrestled for 33 years after the crash, when doctors said his career was done.

I don't think there can be any wrestler who is luckier.

Well, he died at 43 from a heart attack so..

unlucky in life, far too lucky as a wrestler.

tho i dunno about "luck" being involved when you are 500 pounds.

Unluckiest wrestler ever

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2m8VjpeDpuk/hqdefault.jpg

Now that you mention it Owen does seem like he was a much better fit than Bret to be The Guy he was the all around performer and a much, much, better talker I just don't get what people saw in Bret (who IMO as good as he is he is an insomniac cure)that Owen had in spades.

As far as unlucky wrestlers go I was gonna say Regal but that was his own doing(sadly) so I'll say Brutus Beefcake no amount of money can soothe the pain of being Hogans lifelong bitch.

Owen was not the better fit than Bret. Rose coloured glasses my friend.

Care to explain? Bret was a better wrestler but Owen was a jack of stats and he had a personality.

Also, if Beefcake was unlucky about anything, it was getting his face smashed in a parasailing accident, it's been highlighted already that him being Hogan's bitch was possibly the most lucky thing which happened to him... given that he wasn't all that great (though I didn't think he was terrible in his short lived prime, had a certain appeal to him).

As far as lucky/badass I'll say Undertaker being set on fire twice within seconds and that just made him stomp to the ring faster.

Owen is more of a Chris Jericho type. Amazing in his own way, but could never be a flag barer like Bret. Bret didn't have the Hulk Hogan and rock panache and pizzazz, but he connected with audiences because of his authenticity, similar to a Steve Austin (probably why they blended so well together when they worked). Owen wasn't exactly gang busters on the mic, but he was pretty good, but let's get serious "Kick your leg out of your leg" isn't exactly the work of a wordsmith. Bret carried himself like a motherfucking champion, win, lose or draw.... heel or face. Owen was great, but he didn't have "the guy" appeal.

Bret had a certain swagger about him. Even watching it now, when he walks to the ring, with the shades and the jacket, he just had it. He was also a natural babyface.

I forgot about his accident as far as him having appeal I suppose, my brother loved him which confounds me to this day.

Can we call Pillman unlucky I'm probably alone but I felt he could have been so huge in the attitude era injury just killed it but at the same time he was still amazing on the mic and compelling as hell to watch.

Pillman is definitely a good pick

JBL was lucky. Went from being an under card tag team brawler with no depth to main eventer for over a year and incredibly lengthy title run because, quote, Triple H didn't wanna work Tuesdays. But seriously, his heel push came completely outta nowhere and had Lesnar not left WWE and Angle not been legit injured, JBL doesn't get to the main event that quickly, if at all, seeing as once he dropped the belt he jobbed to other main eventers or only saw extended success in the midcard.

Gorgeous dale with amazing points. Always been a huge fan of double a myself.

Jeff Hardy is one lucky guy!

With the bumps he has taken and his history of substance abuse I'm shocked he isn't in a wheel chair, or worse. Hell, I'm shocked he is seen as employable by any company for as long as he was.

Would "unlucky" guys be the ones who were finally "breaking out" in 2001..... right before WCW folded? Shane Helms, Elix Skipper, Kronik, O'Hare, Palumbo, Staziak, Jindrak were all hitting their strides and putting on great matches in those final months of WCW and then never really found that "place" after that....

Matt hardy on the unlucky list. His brother gets the talent, less fat of a face,better hair. Then of course his girl gets edged

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How about Daniels and Modest half killing themselves and getting a WCW contract.... then the company folding shortly after? Daniels has gone on to still have a spotlight career, unfortunately Modest didn't.

Putting X-pac in the hall of fame because he was in DX is one step above putting Mongo in the hall of fame because he was in the horsemen.

Kennedy is the first that comes to mind, but with that already said; Nick Dinsmore.

Was considered a stand-out in OVW, with excellent in-ring credentials, called up to the main roster and saddled with the "Eugene" gimmick; something that's hard to bounce back from.

Sort of a double-edged sword as he was ridiculously over at the time, and no doubt has dined out on that character for years after, but he never stood a chance of being repackaged/used in a more legitimate way.

Modest never would have gotten over. Great wrestler, but he has not an ounce of magnetism about him. He also looks like Kevin Sullivan's and Rugged Ronnie Garvin's love child, which is not a good thing lol

Lol well "luckily" he was Hogan's boy because he got to tag with him against Money Inc at Wrestlemania 9

Luckiest has to be Hornswoggle.I mean, dude's a leprechaun, right? :shifty:

Jeff Jarrett gotta be the luckiest.

He is pretty lucky for being a shitty wrestler.

Matt is actually the wrestler of the two no one notices cause his brother is backflipping of the top of the arena and Matt is an okay talker and in certain gimmicks that showed. Jeff Sucks on the mic period but he was born with weird charisma his brother just lacks it is sad there was a photo of the two of them a while back that had them posing with their titles Jeff with the WWE title and Matt with the ECWWE title that photo said it all.

X Pac was awesome in the ring you jew.

Hey Gertner, I will murder your giant mongoloid ass you fuck. CALL ME A JEW!

But yes, X Pac was actually quite good.

fuck him up Dale!

Unluckiest - Will probably have to go with Daniel Bryan. After his Wrestlemania victory(ies) over Evolution, Bryan had the chance of replacing Cena as "the face" of the WWE, and we all know what happened. As Bret said, Bryan's career is likely over - Daniel just doesn't know it yet.


Luckiest - Kevin Nash. Make friends with the right people + throwing up a few cool hand signs = millions of dollars. Go figure.

You forgot that Nash was Super Shredder in TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze.

#GoNinjaGoNinjaGoNInjaGo

Daniel Bryan being mentioned here, made me think of somebody else, given Bryan's success and still leaving that tremendous void of untapped potential.

hb2k, (not so) secretly hoping you catch this. but maybe not unluckiest but still quite unlucky, has to be Ricky Steamboat. He was one of the all time greats, but in the WWF he was on his way up with the epic match vs. Savage at Mania III and being mega popular, but his dipute with Vince assured he would never be able to reach great heights under Vince's employment.

He obviously did very well in NWA/WCW with Flair after, but a main event WWF run really would have been something special for the Dragon, one of the all time great babyfaces. He reminds me of Daniel Bryan, as whenever they seem on the verge of true greatness , something happens just to keep them underneath the glass ceiling. The fact that the two are the absolute ultimate babyface types sort of ties them together for me. Both are all time great workers, who accumulated great success with memorable matches and moments, with major title wins.... but something always seemed to get in the way, keeping them JUST below the ultimate upper echelon.

Rollermacka for being unpinned on Raw.

I think Matt Cappotelli has to be very high on the unlucky list. He looked every bit as promising coming out of Tough Enough as John Hennigan/Nitro/Morrison/Mundo, and had some really entertaining stuff in OVW with his fellow TE winner and guys like Jeter and Skyfire. He had a ton of potential until injuries and then finally a tumor brought his career to a screeching halt. Would he have been a mega star? Probably not. But it's terribly unlucky that he never got his shot at the "big time."

Also droz. Not that he was ever gonna be worth a fuck

Norman Smiley, I'm offering you a dWo 4lyfe shirt, are you down?

This is true for all the hate he gets the dude is solid.

Gorgeous dale, any offer from ya is solid gold.

I actually went to Toronto this weekend for the sole purpose of fighting Dale Newstead but he didn't show up.

Did you tell him you were gonna book the ring and then post a fight location of a woman's gym that doesnt have one? Always a classic move

I challenged him to a taped fist match at the Air Canada Centre.

I generally don't believe in wrestlers to be lucky. I do think most of the time people do get to the spot they deserve. I think everything evens out.

However the Brutus argument might contradict me on that.

Did you record it? Could have been a good part of the undercard for the "Pussies no-showing fights" event DVD I'll be selling in a month.

I hate how you spell center gertrude. Makes my stomach crawl:|

Lmfao @ fan calling gerty a curtain jerker.

I'm so sorry for that. Brb, gonna go grab some chocolate milk out of the fridge. Shouldn't be long, it's only a few metres away.

Lol Dale plays rugby and would probably kick my giant ass in a heartbeat.

Well get on that and we'll make it the main event, then. See if he'll pay for the flight to make it worth your while. I'll give you all proceeds for the sale of the DVD as well. Gonna need SOME actual fighting on this thing.

You drinking chocolate milk just makes me despise you even more

Milk racist

Smiley's such a racist even his reps aren't colored.

Dale plays rugby. I run 5 km races. I see a mis-match.

Milk is fucking disgusting. D, 2 percent, skim, almond, pink or chocolate fuck every milk drinker

Now that's just nonsense.

Your bullshit un-american spelling is nonsense. Fuckin dino bravo

What about Yoohoo, thats not milk it chocolate drink.

I have never once had a yoohoo to drink. I cannot speak on it

uh.... I had a barbershop appointment.

My partner is fresh to death

dWo's 4lyfeness cannot be denied