Pushing Bob Backlund in 1993 was like pushing Bob Backlund in 2023.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Timing is everything.
00:02 Such an adage has been touted since the dawn of time,
00:04 because if you're fighting the powers of the universe,
00:06 you're in trouble, especially in wrestling.
00:09 Us fans are crazy.
00:11 Sometimes those at the top think they know best, though.
00:14 So I'm Simon from WhatCulture.
00:15 Please do hit that subscribe button.
00:17 This is 10 wrestlers WWE pushed at exactly the wrong time.
00:22 Number 10, Bob Backlund.
00:23 So Bob Backlund is a legend.
00:25 Let's not pretend otherwise.
00:27 But deciding to push him in 1993
00:29 is the equivalent of bringing back a Golden Star
00:31 from yesteryear and giving them the rub today.
00:34 Wait a minute.
00:35 I suppose times were just different.
00:36 And to be fair, Bob was only 43 years old
00:39 when he did make his surprise return.
00:41 That's younger than Sheamus, AJ Styles, and Bobby Lashley.
00:44 And yet for some reason, this felt like your granddad
00:46 being booked.
00:47 Made no sense.
00:48 He just wasn't connecting with a new fan base,
00:50 even though Vince McMahon allowed
00:51 him to break the record for the longest time spent
00:53 in a singular Raw Rumble.
00:55 So do you want to know what we did?
00:57 We turned him into a lunatic.
00:59 Yep.
00:59 I mean, we basically tied all the loose ends together
01:01 as Backlund openly talked about being a man out of time
01:04 and not being able to adjust to the modern world.
01:07 This is weird stuff.
01:08 Let's give Bob his due too.
01:10 He was very good at this.
01:11 But the feeling remained that the new generation which
01:13 the then WWF was pushing didn't really
01:16 have a place for Backlund, even if he was a former world
01:19 champion.
01:20 Just didn't click.
01:21 Number 9, Austin Theory.
01:23 So I actually think this one is a little too early to call.
01:26 We don't treat our future stars like stars.
01:28 Nobody is going to think they're a star.
01:30 That's called wrestling logic.
01:32 But I do get it.
01:33 People have this conversation a lot,
01:35 especially after John Cena returned to Raw
01:37 and eviscerated this man on the microphone.
01:39 They felt that he said what we were thinking.
01:42 He likely did.
01:43 Because Cena's whole point was that win or lose
01:45 during their WrestleMania match, Austin
01:47 hasn't unlocked the magic yet.
01:48 So he will continue to struggle to connect.
01:51 To use proper wrestling vernacular,
01:53 theory isn't clicking.
01:54 There's that word again.
01:55 I do think that's key because he should
01:57 beat John at the show of shows.
01:58 And then we can take stock.
02:00 There's a reason both Triple H and Vince McMahon
02:02 have seen something in him.
02:04 That's not an accident.
02:05 We just need to expose it on a wider scale.
02:07 If he did become the WWE champion tomorrow,
02:10 though, there would still be work to do.
02:12 And it's within this area we must operate.
02:14 So sure, Austin Theory may be the future of the company.
02:18 But that doesn't make him the now.
02:20 This really is going to be an interesting case
02:22 study to see play out.
02:24 Number 8, Dolph Ziggler.
02:25 So this is the forever conversation.
02:27 Should Dolph Ziggler have been pushed in a different way
02:29 to how he was?
02:30 Yes.
02:31 Yes, he should have been.
02:32 The reason I use such a term is because he still
02:34 had huge moments.
02:36 He was the world champion and had the occasional main event.
02:38 But he was and is so good, you have
02:40 to figure that more could have been done.
02:42 The dude could do it all.
02:44 If we go back to the 2010s especially,
02:46 everybody wanted to see Ziggler get his, apart from seemingly
02:49 Vince McMahon.
02:51 The boss felt like he knew better.
02:52 So while Dolph got thrown a bone here and there,
02:55 it wasn't the all-encompassing madness we desired.
02:58 It was strange.
02:59 The issue that arose is Ziggler was so talented,
03:01 he started to become a main roster gatekeeper,
03:04 meaning he lost all the time.
03:06 Even though wrestling is predetermined,
03:07 it's still watched by human beings.
03:09 So consciously, after a while, you just decide,
03:12 well, this guy never wins.
03:13 I'll go and focus on somebody else.
03:15 By the time we tried to do something in 2019,
03:17 it was way too late.
03:19 None of this was his fault. Dolph has still
03:21 had a great career and an enviable one.
03:23 But is it what it should have been?
03:26 I don't think so.
03:27 That's the point.
03:28 Wrong place, wrong time.
03:29 Number seven, Big E. Big E deserved so much better
03:33 than this.
03:33 I loved it when he became the WWE champion.
03:36 But much like stable mate Kofi Kingston, for some reason,
03:39 the company did not do right by them at all.
03:41 Because even though the powerhouse
03:43 did cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase
03:45 to rise the ranks, at no point was he
03:47 ever treated like the man.
03:49 Instead, he kind of fluked his way to wins, which is nuts.
03:52 Have you seen Big E?
03:53 He could crush us all.
03:54 It all took off in September 2001,
03:56 which I would still argue was too late,
03:58 as he had connected years prior, when we limped through
04:01 to the Survivor Series and Roman Reigns just beat him.
04:04 That's right.
04:05 He didn't even involve the Usos.
04:07 So maybe this isn't about it being the wrong time.
04:09 Management just didn't know what they were doing.
04:12 On the flip side, the whole focus wasn't the tribal chief.
04:14 So whatever we did was always going
04:16 to put Big E in second place.
04:17 But still, this was stupid.
04:19 That's right.
04:20 I said it.
04:20 Big E had and has all it takes to be
04:22 the great baby-faced champion.
04:24 You just needed to support him as such.
04:27 Number six, Mr. Ass.
04:29 I always enjoy it when we go back to this era
04:31 and talk about Mr. Ass, because that was his name.
04:34 Billy Gum was gone.
04:35 And if anybody walked into the room,
04:37 you'd have to tell them you were watching Mr. Ass.
04:41 That's the end of that relationship.
04:42 It is important to remember that in 2023,
04:44 AEW have done a terrific job with him, and he is mega over.
04:48 But when the WWF tried to push him in 1999,
04:51 they weren't really reading the room.
04:53 For whatever reason, the adjut era fans
04:55 didn't see Billy Gum as a main eventer,
04:57 likely because he'd spent his whole career being a tag team
05:00 guy.
05:00 With the Road Dogg especially, he
05:02 had done a lot of goofy stuff.
05:03 While it's always goofy wrestling for life,
05:05 as far as I'm concerned, you can't then
05:07 just try and be serious.
05:09 You need some sort of evolution.
05:10 We just chose to name him even more after his rectum.
05:13 The real nail in the coffin is when he went head to head
05:15 with The Rock and Man.
05:16 This was death in the ring.
05:18 The rumor has always been that Dwayne Johnson didn't really
05:20 want to work with a dude obsessed with his bum,
05:22 so walked out onto Raw and just killed him
05:24 with a microphone in his hand.
05:26 And wasn't ready for that, and he never really recovered,
05:29 at least not in this role.
05:30 I remember all of this, and the problem really
05:32 was that we went too fast.
05:34 The powers that be just woke up one day and screamed,
05:36 Billy can do it, rather than figure out how to get him
05:39 there.
05:40 Because sure, he could have done,
05:42 but without the right pathway, nope, didn't work.
05:45 Number five, Lord Tensai.
05:47 I still do not get this one at all.
05:50 Somebody saw that Matt Bloom was doing excellent work in Japan,
05:53 but rather than bring him back to WWE and let him be that guy,
05:57 they drew symbols all over his face and called him Lord Tensai.
06:02 This wasn't 1987 either.
06:03 It was 2012, and he was put into a feud with John Cena.
06:07 Fans weren't having this at all and started to chant Albert
06:10 for obvious reasons.
06:11 And given that Brock Lesnar soon returned in the role
06:13 that Tensai should have had, forget about it.
06:17 He was done.
06:17 It didn't last long either as even WWE
06:19 realized they'd made an error.
06:21 Poor Mr. Bloom.
06:23 Rather than try and fix it, they made him the hip hop hippo,
06:27 which yes, was him dancing around with the Funkasaurus.
06:30 Only in wrestling you can say that sentence.
06:33 Why the hell do we watch this?
06:34 Number four, the Triple H rehires.
06:36 So once again, we do have to wait and see.
06:39 It's too early to tell because things can change in an instant,
06:41 but at the moment, a lot of the wrestlers Triple H rightfully
06:44 hired back to WWE haven't found their feet yet.
06:47 In fact, most have vanished from TV.
06:49 Hit Row were all over the place before going heel,
06:51 and then they were no longer being featured.
06:53 And after a decent feud with Drew McIntyre,
06:56 Karrion Kross feels lost in the shuffle.
06:58 I mean, in the lead up to WrestleMania 39,
07:00 he was barely seen.
07:01 Tegan Nox hasn't done much of anything so far,
07:03 which is the same for Candice LeRae and Mia Yim.
07:06 Not even sure any of them has had a proper feud yet.
07:09 Takao Akai has done better, but Damage Control too
07:11 were slightly misplaced.
07:12 We're still waiting on Bronson Reed.
07:14 He's been having some great squash matches,
07:16 but you can't do that forever.
07:18 Need some meat on the bones.
07:19 So we do need to give a shout out to Braun Strowman,
07:22 who did return and picked up exactly where he left off.
07:24 But a lot of the mentioned folk are going to need
07:26 some rehab eventually.
07:28 Let's not get it wrong, though.
07:29 I'm glad they have jobs.
07:31 Not one of those crazies on Twitter.
07:33 They shouldn't have been fired in the first place.
07:35 Number three, Batista.
07:36 So as far as I'm concerned, Batista is one of the most
07:39 underrated wrestlers ever.
07:41 The vibe was always that he was a one-trick pony,
07:43 but he wasn't.
07:44 The dude had nuance and layers for days,
07:46 hence why he's smashing it in acting.
07:48 He gets it.
07:49 When he decides to return in 2014, though,
07:52 WWE got it totally wrong.
07:54 And do you know who called this before it even kicked off?
07:57 Big Dave.
07:58 Yep.
07:59 As soon as he was told his plans,
07:59 the Animal fired back this was a bad idea.
08:02 He was right.
08:03 Vince McMahon was adamant that Batista came back
08:05 as a good guy and win the Royal Rumble,
08:07 even though we all knew that would get him booed.
08:10 This was a time where it was Daniel Bryan or bust,
08:12 and it took watching the show for 10 seconds to see that.
08:15 It was also in this period where CM Punk walked out,
08:18 which heightened the cause,
08:19 and poor Batista got caught in the crosshairs.
08:22 If we had just brought him back as an evil man,
08:24 none of this would have been an issue.
08:26 That's why sometimes you should listen to your wrestlers,
08:29 almost like they know what they're doing.
08:31 Number two, Braun Strowman.
08:32 So as said earlier, Braun Strowman is smashing it right now.
08:36 Whoever is responsible for his current placement
08:38 and booking, bravo, it's great.
08:39 This was kind of the same back in 2017
08:42 when the Monster Among Men
08:43 was the most over-the-top thing in wrestling,
08:45 but man, it rocked.
08:46 He was flipping cars
08:47 and making Roman Reigns' life a living hell.
08:50 There was a problem during the time
08:52 where we pushed the big dog and nobody else.
08:54 It got really stupid, as you could tell,
08:56 WWE knew this and figured out ways
08:58 to give Strowman a little something
09:00 while never letting him properly beat Roman,
09:02 and that's why it was dumb.
09:03 All the fans wanted it.
09:05 Just pull the trigger.
09:06 It really was frustrating
09:07 because it wouldn't have affected anything in the long run.
09:09 Braun could have had his five minutes
09:11 and then sure, go back to Reigns as and when,
09:13 but give us something.
09:15 You know what all this means?
09:16 Sometimes you're just not allowed to have nice things.
09:18 Number one, Roman Reigns.
09:20 And speaking of all of this, yeah, who else?
09:23 For if you watched the Roman Reigns experiment in real time,
09:26 you know it was insane.
09:28 Every week for years, Vince McMahon demanded
09:30 that Roman was treated as a megastar,
09:32 even though fans constantly called for somebody else.
09:35 My nan could have figured this out
09:36 and she doesn't even know what wrestling is,
09:38 and she's dead.
09:39 It's not like Reigns hadn't connected before this
09:41 because the Shield were excellent,
09:42 but it was the insistence to not even play around with this
09:45 that sent people nuts.
09:46 And lo and behold, what happened
09:47 when we got to the head of the table character?
09:50 He turned into one of the best performers of modern times.
09:54 I tell you, I am shocked.
09:55 We did so much here too
09:57 with Roman winning multiple world titles
09:59 and even beating The Undertaker
10:00 for only the second time in Mania history,
10:02 but yeah, if we had just turned him heel,
10:05 forget all this right place, right time nonsense,
10:07 wouldn't have mattered.
10:08 We didn't know, as ever, we ignored it
10:11 for as long as we possibly could.
10:13 It really is ridiculous.
10:15 Know of any other wrestlers
10:16 WWE pushed at exactly the wrong time?
10:18 Make sure you let us know in the comments below,
10:20 and then don't forget to like the video,
10:21 share the video, and subscribe.
10:23 Then you can also go to whatculture.com
10:25 where you can read more articles like this with your eyes.
10:27 You can come follow us @whatcultureWWE
10:29 and @SimonMeta316 on Twitter.
10:31 Look, there's videos on the screen right now.
10:34 How about you touch one and see what happens?
10:36 My name is Simon from What Culture.
10:37 Thank you very much for joining me as always.
10:39 You take care of yourself, and I'll chat to you soon.
10:42 (upbeat music)