Wrestlers you always wanted to win the big title
 

We had a similar thread, I know, but it was BEST wrestlers to never win the title. Here I just want us to talk about people you wanted to win the title.

So Scott Hall obviously, love Scott Hall. Also, Ken Shamrock. Thought he should get the strap after winning KotR.

Was very glad when Benoit won the world championship.

Wait, has Christian ever won it?

Yeah Christian won it a couple times.

Piper in 84 WWF

Everyone wins it now. Means nothing.

Jerry The King Lawler in 2011.

Big Boss Man. Blue, not the swat team. I remember watching the 92 Rumble (maybe the best Rumble ever) as a 9 year old and Boss man is 1 on 1 in the ring with Ric Flair. I'm thinking he's totes gonna win the Rumble. Then he charges Flair and misses, falling over the top rope. So pissed.

Well then, not now necessarily.

But yeah, if Jack Swagger could win it, it doesn't mean shit.

Kevin Federline

If he was in WCW and not WWE it would've happened.

realistically speaking (as in people who actually had a shot). I'm only doing WWE for this one

Piper in the mid 80's like already said
Dibiase in the late 80's (Andre handing him the title does not count)
Luger in 93.
RVD in 2001

Christian was never WWE Champion although he had two reigns as the World Heavyweight Champion as part of the Smackdown roster. Being a world champion on the flagship show does seem to carry more weightage if you were to believe CM Punk.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f47WiAq43u0?rel=0&start=300&end=390" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>


P. S. I would love to see Kofi Kingston win the big one.

AJ Styles, Christian, Jeff Hardy, Swagger, Khali, JBL, Bray Wyatt, Mark Henry, Ziggler, Eddie Guerrero, Jinder Mahal etc. have exclusively been world champions on the B Show.

Mr Perfect.
British Bulldog

Oh yeah, Curt Henning. Good choice. BB, too, but I liked Hennig more.

By the way, what the hell is wrong with WWE? Why is Joe Hennig not Joe Hennig but some stupid shit like Curtis Axel?

X Pac.

With this being the case... Santino winning it in 2012 would have been great. He was entertaining as fuck, crazy over and it would have been one of the most surreal, insane moments ever.

So the answer is they have been world champs. End this line of DAMn Inator thought.

Answer is the same as the "best to never win" thread.

Regal.

Big John Studd never won the WWF Championship and that ain't right

Something about WWE wanting him to earn the Hennig name and not just be given his family's wrestling name like with Randy Orton and Ted Dibiase Jr did.

Charlotte was the same but also as part of WWE's habit of not wanting to give female wrestlers last names. Once she "earned" the Flair name, they started to mention her full name more in shows.

How is he going to earn it as a jobber.

Paul Orndorff in 1986 WWF

He jobbed to Kofi Kingston for the Madden Championship baaaaaaaybe

Marty Jannetty.

Owen at Summerslam 1994

Hassan would have been an amazing heel champion.

Too bad they went "full terrorist" with him. Everybody knows you don't go "full terrorist".

Agree with shouts for Dibiase, Mr Perfect and Bossman. They were all great characters and would have been cool to see as champions. Disagree with Piper. He didn't play ball and would constantly have double count outs and brawls to the back to avoid losses. Same with Hacksaw, although he was definitely over enough.

More modern ones are definitely harder because of how quickly belts got thrown about, but one I would go for would be Goldust. Think his character work was great as a heel and I think a feud with Austin (if he had agreed to it as planned) would have been great.

Also, I know he got it, but a Kane monster run when he first burst onto the scene would have been great to see. 24 hour reign was their first mistake with him.

Highly controversial one, but I would have marked out for a Test win against a bully champion HHH back in the day too.

Hornswoggle

Christian should have held it earlier, longer, and for more times.

HBK post return and elimination chamber win.

As has already been said definitely Razor Ramon.

Also as a kid always wanted Tatanka to win the big one.

As someone from Iranian descent , I loved Hassan and Daviari. Just as timing for them that the London bombings happened when they did.

Yeah, exactly. They pissed off the largest Muslim community in the USA, Dearborn, Michigan who protested to UPN or CW or whoever aired SD! at the time and then the network pressured WWE into taking him off-screen. He had an official write-off altogether later in July at the PPV that month where 'Taker basically destroyed him.

Jinder proved that turban fuckers would suck as champ.

I loved Hassan because he wasn't really the stereotypical "evil foreigner" heel. He was a perfect updated version of it. Instead of being all "I hate America! Yay other countries!" he would just be like "You guys chanting 'USA' realize I'm a fucking American, don't you?'" He was an "evil foreigner" heel character who was actually justified. It was great.

I think you're getting your racial slurs mixed up.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TmQA6jsC3h4" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This was just outstanding.

Wade Barrett. That he never won it was a combination of bad booking and his body betraying him on multiple occasions.

Never really cared about Barrett all that much until they started those bare-knuckle fighter vignettes hyping his return a few years ago. He came off like a badass and, more importantly, he actually had a distinctive character all of a sudden instead of being the same paint-by-numbers heel everyone else was. It took them all of a week after his return to fuck it up.

Hassan was better two years into his career than Jinder Mahal was thirteen in.

William Regal and Val Venis, by the way.

I remember being really into the idea of Al Snow getting a title reign after the original Tough Enough.

I always liked Al Snow. Had this genuine guy charisma about him around that time.

"Hi-ho, hi-ho! We want Commissioner Snow!"

That show really painted him as a hardass but loveable old veteran. It made me really wanna see him be the older guy who was destined to never achieve greatness himself but then somehow does the unthinkable and wins the gold. Had the same feeling with Regal at a certain point. A lifetime underachiever who is now the ultimate underdog against some young buck.

I feel like both guys would have been great against some cocky young punk champion who just belittles all their achievements and laughs at the idea that they could ever be a threat. The crowd would have been so behind them. People love that shit.

An Italian and a Canadian Silk :lol:

Wade Barrett, Kenny Dykstra, Alex Riley, and Drew McIntyre stand out as far as recent history is concerned.

Alex Riley had the look. That's about it. He was horribly awkward in the ring and on the mic.

Riley had good entrance music too.

https://i.imgur.com/hgLyaGI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/VsRXNRW.png

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GCfOv1DWsHQ?list=PLG74nexCbW8a3rce6h3_nwpK3j-DTMFP3&amp;ecver=1" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Riley looked like a million bucks here. Came across as genuinely sympathetic (although most of this is attributed to Miz being a magician), got a huge pop when he finally decked Miz, and he did the little things like playing to the hard camera really well. Then he got his great new theme music the next week and I thought it was off to the races.

Shame he ended up really sucking ass in the ring though.

Yup. That was terrible.

I was all in on getting Barrett a title run during the Nexus days, or at least getting Taker at Mania 27. I assumed that's what they were going for when Nexus attacked Taker multiple times with no follow up.

The nearfalls and drama you could have with Taker fighting off Nexus would've been brilliant. Would've much preferred that over the mutual masturbation that was Taker/HHH.

Remember when David Otunga was threatening to tell everybody "the real reason we attacked The Undertaker"?

Saw him wrestle Santino at a house show as that varsity villain character and he was pretty good. I was happy that he got to NXT, and he did okay there. But when he first turned on The Miz I thought: "hey, this guy's really got something."

Then he had a match or did a run-in the next week or two and he was quite "clunky," to say the least, so that was that.

He was good in GLOW though lol

The first thing I think of watching that back is oddly, how WWE is refused to acknowledge the internet/social media/the indies. Shows how bad they were at keeping with the times, the way they acted like WWE was it's own complete reality with no internet etc.

Holy shit, that's right.

lol WWE

The Uso on the left should get the belt. He's good. Way better than the Uso on the right

Shamrock won the TNA title if that counts as anything.

Actually he won the NWA Championship.

And that was tonight’s “Needless Correction” brought to you by XL.

I'm thankful that I did not remember that or it would have annoyed the shit out of me.

It wasn't even just that he sucked ass in the ring. He would also botch moves in ways that made you think "he's thinking too much before he does things". Made him come off like a Tough Enough contestant you're just waiting for Al Snow to take aside and give a pep talk to. He made a lot of mental mistakes.

Didn't he accidentally eliminate himself early from the rumble one year and force them to change plans mid match? Also, the NXT season wars thing where he started attacking his own teammate. That was very telling. It was like he was just going out there thinking "must wrestle" and didn't have the most basic idea of what his role was.

He did have a hilarious moment I remember where he was backstage with Yoshi Tatsu making fun of Big Show and Show came out of nowhere to attack them. Show punches Yoshi and Riley just awkwardly acts like he doesn't see him at first and then goes "What's wrong!?" before getting punched himself. lol

There was just so much awkwardness in everything he did. It's what I remember most about him by far.

Theme was pretty good though.

Hahaha! Aww, no.

Can't remember where I heard it, but apparently the plan was for The Undertaker's Nexus attack to be under the orders of Triple H, who would end up leading them, but he didn't want to turn heel.

Seems so obvious now that you’ve said it. Why wouldn’t HHH insert himself into one of/the hottest angle of the time?

It was always supposed to be the plan, and Triple H wouldn't deviate. When Wade Barrett led the Nexus to take out Taker, I thought they were edging towards Taker vs. Barrett (w/ Nexus) at Mania, but it's much more likely that Triple H vs. Taker was always the plan, and Nexus were just bells and whistles.

Thank you SlickyTrickyDamon

Pre-invasion Lance Storm.

Yeah, in the 2011 Rumble he was meant to stay in for a bit and then later on eliminate Cena (with Miz who was on commentary distracting him from the outside). He got thrown over the rope at one point and lost his grip, eliminating himself in error. You can even see Cena drop to the lower rope to pick up his new elimination orders from the ref. They basically did the exact same planned elimination except Riley came back out to distract Cena and Miz got the elimination despite not being in the match.

So while it was technically a fuck-up by Riley, I can forgive him. I'm actually surprised more accidental eliminations haven't happened. And they covered it up well enough to barely notice.

The NXT one though.....god, I tried to block that out of my memory but it's possibly one of the worst segments in WWE history.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-1rVDQHHntA" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

-Michael McGillicutty delivering possibly the worst promo ever, hinting at the "Genesis of McGillicutty"
-Percy Watson, a clear as day babyface gimmick, having to be a heel in this
-Eli Cottonwood, the biggest man in the group, disappearing as soon as the Pros run in for the save
-Titus O'Neil no-selling MVP's Players Boot
-Husky Harris murdering Kaval while the guys who were there to save him just watch
-McGillicutty and Riley running back down, why did they even leave?
-Riley attacking Watson
-Everyone awkwardly standing around at the end, sans Cottonwood who left for reasons unexplained
-"OH YEAH!"

I honestly have no idea what the fuck they were going for in this segment. Were they all supposed to go to SmackDown as Genesis to be the answer to Nexus on Raw? If so, did they seriously think Michael goddamn McGillicutty would've been charismatic enough to lead a major stable?

Cottonwood's disappearance is funnier when you consider that he's the only one that didn't get another chance. Lucky Cannon was put on NXT Redemption and the others all made it to the main roster eventually. Cottonwood's last appearance was running away the second he faced the slightest bit of resistance.

Wasn't Cottonwood Bray Wyatt's first 'Muscle'?

In FCW yes, but he never made it back to the main roster like the others.

How didn't Percy Watson not become a huge star. I don't get it.

Keep reading the title as " win the big titties"

In which case, fuck the wrestlers, I want to win them.

They then got him to stop having personality on purpose. He'd show up as enhancement on the Full Sail NXT and just be a babyface flailing about. Then he goes away and comes back a commentator. He must have been making some really shitty mistakes on live events or something.

I'd probably take his wrestling over his commentating though.

I heard he had a bad attitude. I remember when he came back to NXT Redemption and the totally got rid of his gimmick. I don't get it

They've given him another big chance for someone who has a "bad attitude." I don't know, there must be something fishy going on there. It wouldn't even be a health thing though, because they let him wrestle for years after they dropped the gimmick.

From what I heard was he sulked when he got sent back down to FCW and got released right before the debut of NXT as we know it now

It doesn't.

Ken Shamrock would make a great random appearance dude for the company. I think they worry about his sanity. But he was all over the Attitude era, and it just never found that next gear.

I expected Percy Watson to wind up back in something similar to his gimmick and teaming with Darren Young in maybe a slightly toned down version of their South Beach Boys FCW team.

Essentially, I figured they'd end up being the Prime Time Players before the Prime Time Players formed.

That NXT season 2 ending was a clusterfuck.

There was definitely something there.

Basically any member of the New Day minus Xavier Woods.

Xavier got his moment of fame, when he was underneath Paige.

Yeah just not a wrestler.

Giant Gonzalez, he was tall. Tall rasslers should have the belt.